Marin renters face a housing crisis: rental housing is scarce, rents are rising and renters are vulnerable. Renters do not enjoy the same security that any homeowner enjoys — knowing that if the bills are paid and the property is maintained, they can continue to stay in their home.

That stability allows children to attend school without disruption, seniors to have continuity of care and support, and people from all walks of life to contribute daily to Marin’s quality of life. And housing instability disproportionately affects families with children, people of color and individuals with disabilities (many of whom are seniors). Marin, already lacking in diversity, risks continuing to lose ground.

Marin County has made great strides toward protecting tenants through its mandatory rent mediation program and its ordinance prohibiting discrimination against those with housing subsidies. But rent mediation without just cause for eviction (i.e., having to state a reason for evicting a tenant) is empty protection. Without just cause, property owners who want to raise rent without mediation can do so easily, by serving a no-cause notice to vacate. Discrimination and retaliation, both illegal, are difficult for tenants to prove. In Legal Aid of Marin’s experience, up to half of tenants facing eviction are asked to move for no stated reason.
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On Sept. 11, Marin County’s supervisors should take action to protect renters by directing staff to draft a strong just-cause ordinance, and give all Marin’s seniors, families, workers and residents a fair chance at stable housing.

— Caroline Peattie, Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California
— Stephanie Haffner, Legal Aid of Marin

​By ADRIAN RODRIGUEZ | arodriguez@marinij.com | Marin Independent Journal

Novato landlords will soon be prohibited from turning away prospective tenants who use Section 8 housing vouchers when a new ordinance becomes law.

After making minor changes, the Novato City Council this week voted unanimously to adopt the ordinance on its first reading, following guidelines set by county officials. A second reading and final vote is scheduled for Sept. 11. If it passes then, the anti-bias housing rule becomes effective in 30 days.

Councilwoman Denise Athas thanked city staff and others who worked to bring the ordinance forward. “It’s such an important item and I think whatever we end up with, the fact that we get it passed is what’s really crucial,” Athas said.

Marin’s Board of Supervisors approved its fair housing ordinance — which forbids landlords from discriminating against prospective tenants with Section 8 or other rental assistance vouchers — in November 2016. Supervisors at the time said they hoped other local municipalities would follow suit adopting similar regulations, in part so that any confusion for renters or landlords could be avoided about where, exactly, the rules apply.

The Novato City Council considered a version of that ordinance in May, but ultimately held off on a decision, considering that there were concerns the regulations didn’t state clearly enough that they applied only to rental housing. At the May meeting, a representative of Nova-Ro, a nonprofit based out of Novato that provides housing to low-income seniors, told the council he was afraid the fair housing ordinance could get in the way of a requirement his organization places on its clients that ensures operations run smoothly. Prospective tenants who apply to live in Nova-Ro’s units have to prove family members or other caretakers live within reasonable distances to the organization’s housing complexes, and can be available to help out during personal emergencies.

In July, the city held a community workshop to discuss options. Bob Brown, Novato’s community development director, said staff reviewed the ordinance that the Fairfax Town Council greenlighted earlier this year. The version of the ordinance presented Tuesday attempted to address all council members’ and landlord concerns, he said. “So with that, I hope we’ve hit the mark this time around,” Brown said.
With regard to a section of the ordinance that deals with civil liability and what the courts can award to a person who is discriminated against, Councilwoman Pat Eklund asked if the Novato ordinance could match exactly the wording of the Fairfax ordinance. Assistant City Attorney Veronica Nebb and City Manager Regan Candelario confirmed that the edit would be acceptable. After Athas made a motion, Eklund added the amendment, and it passed 5-0.

While fair housing advocates applauded the city for taking on the issue, many voiced concerns that they would like to see more consistency in rules adopted by Marin jurisdictions.

David Levin, managing attorney at Legal Aid Marin, said that he serves a client who uses Section 8 housing vouchers, and she was denied housing by an apartment complex that was on the wrong side of the street, just outside the county’s jurisdiction. “The county’s ordinance applied on one side of the street,” he said. “So any opportunity to make the laws uniform across Marin really helps.” He added that after searching homes for rent in Novato, he found six listings that said no Section 8. “The discrimination issue here is very serious,” Levin said.

Caroline Peattie, executive director of Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California said another issue is that the ordinance allows landlords to require that a tenant has a cosigner or guarantor who is a blood relative and within a one-hour drive of the residence. “I think that creates barriers to housing opportunities for people of color and individuals with disabilities and people who don’t have local connections, even if they qualify by income or age,” which goes against the purpose of the ordinance, Peattie said. “So there is a little bit of contradictory language within the ordinance.”

Novato resident Peter Mendoza, who uses a wheelchair and once benefited from the Section 8 housing program, called it a wonderful program and said seniors and people with disabilities often struggle to find housing. Mendoza urged the council to remove language that would allow landlords to require a cosigner to rent. “I think it’s important to remember, many people with disabilities and seniors don’t have families that can cosign, or may not have families at all,” Mendoza said. “I really think that if that is kept in, you’re making it difficult for a lot of people who would otherwise benefit from the program in Novato with the ordinance.”
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Officials in San Rafael said the City Council is poised to adopt its own fair housing rules at its Oct. 1 meeting.

BY EMILY NONKO | AUGUST 29, 2018

For Caroline Peattie to talk about the state of foreclosed homes in minority neighborhoods of Northern California, she has to get into the history of U.S. housing segregation.
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Peattie, the executive director of Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California, draws a line from early- to mid-twentieth century policies that enforced residential segregation by race and resulted in a persistent wealth divide, to the lead-up to the 2009 housing crash, in which minorities were targeted for subprime mortgages and then to the aftermath in which those minority neighborhoods were disproportionately affected by the foreclosure crisis.

In the decade since the crash, she’s seen housing inequality persist in a new way. Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California is one of 19 fair housing organizations, led by the Washington-based National Fair Housing Alliance, filing suit this summer against Bank of America alleging the bank intentionally failed to maintain foreclosed homes in minority neighborhoods, while it consistently maintained similar bank-owned homes in comparable white neighborhoods.

Fair housing organizations consider such disparate treatment of foreclosed homes to be reminiscent of redlining — the practice of denying bank loans and other forms of non-predatory lending to certain people or neighborhoods based on race. Both practices result in the gradual decay of housing stock in predominantly minority neighborhoods.

Peattie rattles off statistics for Vallejo, a city where the group studied 24 homes owned by Bank of America. Two were located in Latino neighborhoods, 16 in predominantly non-white neighborhoods, and six in predominantly white neighborhoods.

“When you look at the data,” Peattie says, “Two of these properties in neighborhoods of color had 10 or more marketing and maintenance deficiencies — one even had 15 — while none of the properties in the white neighborhoods had 10 or more of those deficiencies.” Issues like unsecured or boarded doors, damaged roofs, and peeling paint were documented in minority neighborhoods, she adds, but nearly non-existent in Vallejo’s predominantly white communities.
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As a result, it’s not only property values and therefore wealth creation that suffer disproportionately in minority neighborhoods — physical and mental health suffer, too.

KEVIN FIXLERTHE PRESS DEMOCRAT | August 16, 2018, 4:35PM

The notice to vacate was taped to Rotha Rice’s Rohnert Park apartment door the first week of May. She was expecting it, given she’d heard from neighbors that Americana Apartments was terminating the leases of every tenant enrolled in a federal housing subsidy program.

Rice, 74, was given 90 days to leave the place she has called home since 2006, when she moved into the complex on the city’s northeastern edge with a single cup, a plate and a lamp. In the dozen years since, she accumulated a bed, furniture, a variety of books and other belongings. For the first time in a long time, she felt stable.

The location of the apartment was ideal, situated only a mile and a half from her job of 26 years working graveyard shifts at a Shell gas station. It’s also not far from the city’s senior center where she grabs lunch daily, as well as a longtime network of friends who help get her to and from doctors’ appointments to manage her delicate health. Now that’s all been thrown into disarray as Rice struggles to find another landlord willing to accept her housing voucher.

“On May 3, I called 27 places,” said Rice. “There’s nothing out there, because of the fires. “It’s plenty of time,” she added of the period to relocate, “but for me it’s no time if there’s nothing available.” Finding rental housing in many parts of Sonoma County is increasingly difficult for people like Rice, who rely on the Section 8 program to afford rents in Sonoma County. The waitlist just to get into the program for low-income renters can take up to six years, and those who have finally made it in are seeing the number of landlords who accept the housing vouchers shrink by the month.

More than 4,700 people throughout Sonoma County are enrolled in the federal Section 8 program, which provides vouchers up to $1,633 per month for single-bedroom housing. The money available increases with the size of the rental.
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Admission is based on income. A single person who makes up to $34,400 annually is eligible to apply, while a family of four can make as much as $49,100. Once accepted, people in the program are required to spend 30 to 40 percent of their own income on housing, excluding the value of the voucher.

June 27, 2018, Housingwire by Kelsey Ramírez

Civil rights groups are coming together to bring a lawsuit against Bank of America and Safeguard Properties Management for alleged fair housing violations. 

​The National Fair Housing Alliance, a group of 19 fair housing organizations and two homeowners from Maryland filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the two companies. According to the lawsuit, the defendants intentionally failed to provide routine exterior maintenance and marketing for Bank of America-owned homes in African American and Latino neighborhoods across 37 metro areas. This was then compared with mostly white neighborhoods, where the bank allegedly consistently maintained its homes.

The claims the civil rights groups make about some of these homes is nothing short of shocking. The groups say they found evidence of wildly overgrown grass and weeds, unsecured doors and windows, damaged steps and handrails, accumulated trash and debris, unsecured pools, graffiti and even dead animals decaying in the yards.

By contrast, the lawsuit alleges that in predominantly white working- and middle-class neighborhoods, homes are far more likely to have the lawns mowed and edged regularly, invasive weeds and vines removed, windows and doors secured or repaired, debris and trash removed, leaves raked and graffiti erased from the property.
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Bank of America took possession of these homes after it foreclosed on the properties and became the owner of record. As owner of these homes, the bank is responsible for routine exterior maintenance on all of its properties. NFHA claims it first made Bank of America aware of these problems back in 2009, and even offered recommendations for improvement. However, no such improvements were made, according to the alliance.

“Bank of America should have taken meaningful steps toward fixing these problems after being put on notice, but failed to do so,” said Caroline Peattie, executive director of Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California, one of the fair housing groups filing the lawsuit. “For example, Bank of America boarded windows in communities of color rather than installing clear boarding or fixing the windows."

“Boarded windows carry a stigma and imply the neighborhood is not safe or desirable,” Peattie said. “Bank of America must be held accountable for failing to maintain its foreclosure inventory. In California, Bank of America has played a major part in changing single-family, owner-occupied neighborhoods into rental communities, as large investors buy bank-owned homes in quantity and drag property values down in the process.”

By Richard Halstead, Marin Independent Journal

The owner of a six-unit San Rafael apartment complex has agreed to pay $27,200 as part of a settlement following allegations that she and her property manager discriminated against an Hispanic family that was forced to leave the complex.
The mediated settlement resulted after Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California, formerly known as Fair Housing of Marin, filed a complaint with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and state Department of Fair Employment and Housing. The complaint was filed against Rosa Nguyen, the owner, and Bob Torreso, the property manager of the complex at 150 Clark St. The plaintiffs have requested anonymity.

“I’m happy that our clients were at least partially compensated for the considerable damages they experienced,” Caroline Peattie, Fair Housing’s executive director, said in a statement.
The settlement also requires Nguyen to undergo fair housing training for three years.

Stephen Lightfoot of Corte Madera, the attorney representing Nguyen and Torreso, said, “My clients denied all of the allegations, and we reached a settlement which has a finding of no liability and no admission of liability.”

According to Fair Housing, the family moved into the second story of the complex in February 2011. At that time, four of the units were occupied by non-Hispanic, Caucasian individuals and one was occupied by another Hispanic couple with two children.
Fair Housing said that since the winter of 2011, the plaintiff family had been experiencing issues with mold and moisture in their apartment. As a result, the family’s mother and young son experienced significant allergies and a worsening of respiratory disabilities.

Fair Housing said despite numerous requests that the moisture problems be addressed, nothing was done until the latter half of 2015, when the family’s father was granted permission to replace the moldy carpet with laminate flooring on his own with only partial reimbursement for materials. Soon afterward, according to Fair Housing, property manager Torreso began cautioning the family about noise-related concerns. Torreso told the family that a new tenant had moved in below them and had complained that their son was making too much noise, running around the apartment as late as midnight. The family disputed this, responding that the boy’s bedtime was 9 p.m.

Fair Housing said Torreso also began complaining to the family about the accumulation of garbage at the complex. Since the trash did not belong to the family and the manager provided no indication why he believed it did, the family interpreted these allegations as discriminatory statements based on their national origin.

By early 2016, the tenancies for both the plaintiff family and the other Hispanic family at the complex had been terminated. Torreso told the plaintiff family that the termination of their tenancy was due to the noise caused by their son; he reportedly told them he couldn’t rent the apartment below them because of their child.

Desperate to hold onto their apartment, the plaintiff family offered to relocate to the ground-floor apartment. Fair Housing said that owner Nguyen denied the request, however, stating that she had “had it” with the family.
The plaintiff family’s father alleges that in mid-February 2016, Nguyen told him that she no longer wanted to rent any apartments to families with children. At this point, the family sought help from Fair Housing, which sent a letter requesting rescission of the notice of termination and outlining the family’s concerns. Nevertheless, Nguyen filed an unlawful detainer to evict the plaintiff family and the other Hispanic family.

Fair Housing said a copy of the complex’s House Rules and Regulations, included as an exhibit in the detainer, contained discriminatory statements, because they placed limits on where children could play in the complex. The plaintiff family ultimately relocated to a smaller, more expensive apartment in a neighborhood with much more traffic, noise and crime. Fair Housing said subsequently, in the summer of 2016, it conducted an investigation that showed Torreso was discriminating on the basis of national origin by showing preference to non-Hispanic, Caucasian housing applicants.

Fair Housing said Torreso told its Hispanic investigator who inquired about availabilities that a tenant might be moving out in the next month and advised him to call back in three weeks. Fair Housing said one day later Torreso told its non-Hispanic Caucasian investigator that there might be an opening in two weeks, and also provided more detailed information regarding rental terms, including rent and security deposit amounts.

“Our Latino investigator had a clearly identifiable accent and name,” Peattie said in a release. “He was never given a chance to talk about his qualifications or put in an application.”

Fair Housing said two weeks later, its Latino investigator contacted Torreso again and was told there were no vacancies. Fair Housing said less than 24 hours later, Torreso told its non-Hispanic Caucasian investigator that there were two units opening soon, and agreed to provide him with a tour of the premises.

Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California
BY NICOLE ÇABALETTE

An African-American renter found a new home in Marin and moved in. Her landlord told her that her neighbors would be upset that she had rented to an African-American. The landlord began harassing the tenant, and following a dispute about rent, placed a sign in her window: “Black Section 8 Tenant – Shameless [tenant’s name].” This tenant’s story of racial discrimination is devastating and is even more disturbing because it happened within the last year.

This year marks fifty years since the federal Fair Housing Act was enacted. After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., 125 cities erupted in riots. Seventy thousand military troops and National Guardsmen were deployed in twenty-nine states. One week later, in an attempt to address racial segregation and discrimination, Lyndon Johnson signed the Act into law.

The Fair Housing Act protects individuals from discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, color, national origin, religion, gender, disability and familial status. In California, there are additional protections for marital status, sexual orientation, immigration status, citizenship, primary language, ancestry, source of income and arbitrary characteristics such as age or physical appearance through the California Fair Employment and Housing Act.

Fast forward to 2018. Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California (“FHANC”), formerly known as Fair Housing of Marin, a nonprofit organization serving Marin, Solano, Sonoma and other Bay Area counties, works to ensure equal housing opportunity and to educate the community on the value of diversity in our neighborhoods.

Based in San Rafael, and celebrating its 32nd year serving our community, FHANC is a HUD-Certified Housing Counseling Agency which provides free fair housing counseling, investigation, enforcement, mediation, and legal or administrative referrals to those who have experienced housing discrimination. FHANC also provides foreclosure prevention counseling for distressed homeowners. FHANC staff may represent tenants in the administrative complaint process, and as an agency with standing, sometimes brings administrative complaints and lawsuits in order to change discriminatory housing policies.

Education
For property owners and managers, and other real estate professionals in both the private and public sectors, FHANC provides fair housing law training programs and seminars. Community and tenant groups can also schedule fair housing presentations.
For homeowners suffering a financial hardship, FHANC provides guidance on eligibility and qualifications for participation in federal and state programs to help them stay in their homes, maintain an affordable mortgage payment, and avoid foreclosure.
For homebuyers, FHANC offers pre-purchase education workshops in English and Spanish in the fall and spring, with the next English workshop scheduled for March 1. FHANC’s website is also a fantastic resource for best practices and legal information for tenants, landlords, homeowners and other industry professionals.

Advocacy
FHANC conducts on-call housing discrimination investigations, wherein trained testers take on the role of someone inquiring about housing and report on their experience. Testing is critical to the enforcement of fair housing laws and serves to expose discriminatory practices and patterns that might otherwise go undetected. The reports can be used as evidence in support of a housing discrimination complaint.

For example, FHANC recently conducted a two-part investigation at a property in Marin, using callers with racially-identifiable voices. In both instances, the housing provider refused to schedule a private appointment with the African-American callers; however, when speaking with Caucasian callers just hours later, he agreed to meet without question and offered a lower security deposit.

Another, lesser known piece of FHANC’s advocacy work is its investigations of bank-owned (REO) properties, which commenced in 2013. On February 1, 2018, FHANC, together with the National Fair Housing Alliance and eighteen other fair housing organizations around the country, filed a lawsuit against a Deuschte Bank, its loan servicer, Ocwen Financial, and its property manager, Altisource Portfolian Solutions, related to their failure to maintain and market Deuschte Bank’s REO properties in neighborhoods of color compared to white neighborhoods. FHANC and its partners filed a similar lawsuit last year against Fannie Mae.

Learn More and Get Involved
On April 25, to celebrate Fair Housing Month and to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act’s passage, FHANC will present the 2018 Fair Housing Conference at the Embassy Suites Hotel in San Rafael, which will feature experts in the fair housing field who will address pressing fair housing concerns affecting Marin County and the Bay Area, and offer strategies to promote equal housing opportunity.

The examples of blatant discrimination cited above provide a glimpse into the kind of work still required, fifty years later, to continue the fight for equal housing opportunity. If you are looking for ways to get involved, FHANC is always looking for volunteers interested in becoming testers. If you are interested in helping to uncover illegal housing discrimination, please emailor call Katherine Collado at 415.483.7516. FHANC is also seeking committed board members and donations are always welcome. If you are interested in learning more, please email or call FHANC’s Executive Director, Caroline Peattie at 415.457.5025.
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Nicole Çabalette is a member of MCBA's Board of Directors and a partner at Keegin Harrison LLP, with a transactional practice emphasizing business, real estate law and estate planning.

View the article online here. 

​by Scott Holland 
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Nearly 20 fair housing activist organizations are suing Deutsche Bank, alleging it worked to suppress property values in minority neighborhoods across the country by allowing foreclosed homes to fall into disrepair, while maintaining its holdings much better in predominantely white neighborhoods.

In a complaint filed Feb. 1 in federal court in Chicago, the private organizations said Deutsche Bank did less exterior maintenance and marketing of properties it acquired through foreclosure in predominantly minority neighborhoods in 30 metropolitan areas. In addition to Deutsche Bank, named defendants include Ocwen Financial Corp. and Altisource Portfolio Solutions, Inc., which do home preservation and maintenance work for bank-owned properties.

The housing groups say they investigated more than 1,100 foreclosed properties going back to 2011, collecting “evidence on 39 objective aspects of the routine exterior maintenance of each property investigated, and accumulated over 29,000 photographs of the pertinent conditions, such as unsecured doors, damage to steps, handrails, windows and fences, graffiti, the accumulation of trash and mail and overgrown grass and shrubbery.”

They also said they identified marketing deficiencies like an absence of “for sale” signs or current online listings while allowing “negative signage and warnings to deter prospective buyers” such as “bank-owned,” “auction” or “foreclosed.”
According to the complaint, there were “highly significant disparities in the routine exterior maintenance and marketing of the Deutsche Bank-owned homes in communities of color as compared to white communities.” The plaintiffs said it found in each of the 30 cities examples of bank-owned properties in markedly worse conditions in neighborhoods primarily occupied by African-American and Latino residents.

This approach perpetuated racial segregation, the complaint alleged, by denying housing opportunities, impeding neighborhood stabilization and economic recovery and lowering the value of other homes. They say taking care of properties differently based on the racial makeup of their neighborhood violates the Fair Housing Act, and further that it affects the organizations’ “missions by perpetuating the unlawful discrimination and segregation they use their limited resources to dismantle.”

Plaintiff organizations include the National Fair Housing Alliance, Hope Fair Housing Center, South Suburban Hosing Center, Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia, Fair Housing Opportunities of Northwest Ohio, Fair Housing Continuum, Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, Denver Metro Fair Housing Center, Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council, Fair Housing Center of West Michigan, Miami Valley Fair Housing Center, Housing Research and Advocacy Center, Fair Housing Center of the Greater Palm Beaches, Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana, Central Ohio Fair Housing Association, Housing Opportunities Project for Excellence, Connecticut Fair Housing Center, North Texas Fair Housing Center and Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California.

According to the complaint, the organizations filed an administrative housing discrimination complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Fair House and Equal Opportunity Office on Feb. 26, 2014, and amended it six times through July 26, 2017, as its investigation continued. That complaint is pending.

They also said Ocwen and Altisource have “histories of regulatory violations, allegations of unlawful corporate conduct and intentional bad acts, requiring the payment of millions of dollars to resolve claims that they have intentionally violated consumer finance, civil rights and securities laws, and defrauded borrowers with respect to their mortgage loans.”
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In addition to a jury trial, the organizations want a court to declare Deutsche Bank’s conduct in violation of FHA regulations and to force it to stop treating properties differently based on neighborhood demographics. They seek unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
The housing organizations are represented by Soule, Bradtke & Lambert, of Elmhurst; Relman, Dane & Colfax PLLC, of Washington, D.C.; and the National Fair Housing Alliance, also of Washington, D.C.