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A settlement has been reached with one of the parties named in a lawsuit that grabbed national attention for its allegations of racial bias in a Marin County home appraisal. A nonprofit fair-housing legal advocacy group that brought the federal lawsuit with the homeowners announced a settlement deal with AMC Links LLC, a Utah-based appraisal management company named in the December 2021 federal lawsuit brought by homeowners Tenisha and Paul Tate-Austin. Terms of the agreement are confidential. But the case is ongoing against the other defendants — appraiser Janette Miller and her San Rafael company, Miller and Perotti Real Estate Appraisals Inc. of San Rafael, according to Caroline Peattie, executive director of Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California. “We are in the discovery phase now, and the case is set for trial for fall of 2023,” Peattie told the Business Journal in an email Wednesday. According to the complaint, Miller’s appraisal of the home was based on the race of the couple, who are Black, and Marin City neighborhood. The couple bought a Pacheco Street home in Marin City for $550,000 in December 2016 and refinanced it in 2020. Miller valued the home at $995,000. The couple thought that was low and had another appraiser evaluate it. But first, they removed indications of the racial background of the owners. That valuation came in $1.48 million, close to the median market value for Marin at the time, court documents said. Attorneys for Miller and her firm filed an answer in mid-September to an amended complaint, denying the allegations and calling for a jury trial. The real estate industry has been coming to terms with bias in the business in recent years. The National Association of Realtors issued new guidelines in 2020 to guard against discrimination. And earlier this month, the California Association of Realtors issued an apology for its endorsement in the 1950s and 1960s of “racial zoning, ‘redlining’ and racially restrictive covenants” and opposition to the state’s first fair-housing laws. Peattie said her organization has filed two other administrative appraisal complaints about racial bias. One is with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity group, and the other with California’s Civil Rights Department. She said the agencies are investigating the claims, but the matters haven’t been resolved yet. Click here to read the entire article.
If this week is any indication, Attorney General Rob Bonta is on a mission. On Wednesday, he announced that his office would conduct an independent investigationinto last year’s redistricting in the city of Los Angeles following the explosive publication of a secretly recorded meeting in which three city council members and an influential labor leader could be heard making racist comments, insulting their colleagues and plotting how to draw city council district boundaries to consolidate Latino political power.
Also Wednesday, Bonta issued an update on his office’s efforts to limit the spread of fentanyl, a super-powerful synthetic opioid largely responsible for record-high fatal overdoses in California. Since April 2021, Bonta said, his office has seized more than 4 million fentanyl pills and nearly 900 pounds of fentanyl powder and performed more than 200 arrests.
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SONOMA COUNTY, CA — Section 8 renters in three North Bay counties including Sonoma face widespread discrimination, a newly released report alleges. Tests conducted in Sonoma County revealed the highest incidence of race discrimination (63 percent) and source of income discrimination (88 percent), with 92 percent revealing at least some evidence of either or both, according to the Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California (FHANC) study’s findings. California residents receiving housing choice vouchers (also known as “Section 8”) are protected from discrimination under amendments to the California Fair Employment and Housing Act made in January 2020. The amendments made it illegal to discriminate against or exclude tenants and applicants because they have a Section 8 voucher. Housing providers in Solano County evidenced the least discrimination, with 32 percent of tests revealing evidence of race discrimination and 44 percent revealing evidence of source of income discrimination. Click here to keep reading. Click here to read the entire article.
MARIN COUNTY, CA — Section 8 renters in three North Bay counties including Marin face widespread discrimination, a newly released report alleges. Two thirds of Marin landlords in eight municipalities revealed at least some evidence of discrimination based on race, income, or both, according to the Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California (FHANC) study’s findings. The San Rafael-based nonprofit investigated properties in Greenbrae, Kentfield, Larkspur, Mill Valley, Novato, San Anselmo, San Rafael, and Sausalito. California residents receiving housing choice vouchers (also known as “Section 8”) are protected from discrimination under amendments to the California Fair Employment and Housing Act made in January 2020. The amendments made it illegal to discriminate against or exclude tenants and applicants because they have a Section 8 voucher. Click here to keep reading. Click here to read the entire article.
MARIN COUNTY, CA — A Marin landlord has agreed to comply with state law and pay a fair housing advocacy group $25,000 after allegedly refusing to accept housing vouchers, the state’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing said Wednesday in a news release. A housing discrimination complaint filed by Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California (FHANC) precipitated the agreement, the DFEH said. The complaint alleged that the owners of Bon Air Apartments, a large Greenbrae apartment complex refused to rent to prospective tenants who would have used housing choice (formerly known as Section 8) vouchers to help pay their rent. State law prohibits discrimination based on a tenant’s source of income, including use of a housing choice voucher. The dispute was resolved through mediation with the DFEH’s Dispute Resolution Division. Click here to keep reading. Click here to read the entire article in the Marin IJ.
The need for housing is acute across Marin County, yet how to address the tremendous need is a thicket of issues and conflicting perspectives. The good news is that residents can help with an update to the local housing element, which provides an analysis of a community’s housing needs for all income levels and seeks to offer strategies that will respond to them. By law, the housing element is required as part of the county’s general plan. The 2022 update, happening now, will guide policy and practice through 2030. If a pathway to housing that allows essential workers, students, and people of color to live here is to be achieved, we must seize this moment to address local affordability as key to achieving racial and economic equity. Challenges around housing affordability in Marin and the greater Bay Area are well known. Issues of affordability for renters in Marin, where 38% of current housing is renter-occupied, deserve particular attention. For approximately 55% of Marin renters, the cost of their current housing exceeds the threshold of what is considered affordable. This means that they pay more than 30% of their income on housing costs. Even more concerning, at least 25% of renters currently pay more than 50% of their income toward housing costs. The lack of affordability undermines individual and family stability. It has ripple effects throughout our community, from the ability of local businesses to hire and retain workers, to increased traffic and commute times when workers cannot afford to live locally. More concerning and perhaps less well known are the racial disparities present in Marin’s current housing landscape. Homelessness and housing insecurity disproportionately impact people of color, families with children and people with disabilities. These groups are protected under state and federal fair housing laws. But in Marin, a disproportionate share of renters are people of color. Though they are only 18% of the population, 71% of Latinos and 70% of African Americans rent in Marin. Marin County apartment owners agree to a settlement after refusing to rent to Section 8 recipients6/5/2022 Bob Egelko June 2, 2022 (Updated: June 5, 2022 6:50 p.m.) Click here to read the entire article in the San Francisco Chronicle. An anti-discrimination group says it has settled its case against owners of an apartment complex in Marin County who had refused to offer any of their 646 units to anyone in the Section 8 program, which provides financial aid to low-income renters.
Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California said it was contacted in 2020 by a woman who said she had wanted to rent an apartment at Bon Air Apartments in Greenbrae but had been told by the owners, Greenbrae Management, that they did not accept vouchers under Section 8, which are subsidized by the federal government. Such refusals are permitted by federal law but are prohibited by California law, which since 2019 has barred housing discrimination based on the source of a renter’s income. The advocacy group said it started holding workshops for property owners in the area to inform them of the law, and posted flyers in stores, restaurants and other business locations in Marin and Sonoma counties. It also filed a complaint with the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing and sent its own investigators, posing as renters, to Greenbrae Management. Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle staff writer
Feb. 7, 2022: Updated: Feb. 7, 2022 6:45 p.m. Read the article on the SF Chronicle's website here. Read FHANC's press release for this settlement here. Housing-rights advocates announced a settlement Monday that will provide $53 million in government aid to minority home-buyers and homeowners in 39 U.S. metropolitan areas, including two in the Bay Area, Vallejo and Richmond/Oakland. The agreement resolves a lawsuit filed in Oakland in 2016 accusing the Federal National Mortgage Association, or Fannie Mae, of racial discrimination in its foreclosure practices: providing maintenance to homes on which it had foreclosed in largely white areas, while allowing foreclosed homes in communities of color to deteriorate, harming their neighborhoods and future residents. The settlement does not include any admission of wrongdoing but requires the agency to assist residents in the affected districts. According to Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California, more than $35 million will be used nationwide to promote home ownership, renovate housing and provide assistance with credit and down payments. Of those funds, $755,000 will go to each of the the two Bay Area districts for neighborhood rehabilitation, and additional sums will be available for fair-housing services, said the group’s executive director, Caroline Peattie. She said the suit followed a four-year investigation of more than 2,300 foreclosed homes owned by Fannie Mae, including 68 in Vallejo and nearby Solano County neighborhoods and 88 in Oakland and Richmond. According to the suit, more than 39% of foreclosed homes in Black or Latinx neighborhoods had trash visible on the property, 25% had unsecured or broken doors, and more than 41% had damaged, boarded or unsecured windows, more than twice the rates of such disrepair in homes taken over by Fannie Mae in white neighborhoods. The agency sought to dismiss the suit, but U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White ruled in 2019 that the housing-rights groups could try to prove that Fannie Mae violated fair-housing laws by failing to change its conduct after being notified of the investigation and its findings. The groups said it was the first federal court ruling to conclude that housing-discrimination laws applied to foreclosed properties owned by the agency. “We poured a lot of time and effort into investigating the differences between the marketing and maintenance of foreclosed homes in communities of color compared to white communities, because we knew how big an impact this can have on the health and well-being - financial and otherwise - of neighborhoods with foreclosed properties,” Peattie said in a statement. “We are excited that Fannie Mae has made the commitments it has in this settlement.” Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko Click here to read the entire article.
MARIN COUNTY, CA — Being Black in Marin nearly cost a couple a half a million dollars. That’s according to Paul Austin and his wife Tenisha Tate-Austin, a Marin City couple whose allegations of racial discrimination have made national headlines in recent days. The Austins last week filed a federal lawsuit that names a San Rafael-based appraiser as the defendant. The couple suspected they’d been discriminated against earlier this year when Janette Miller appraised their four-bedroom Marin City home — that in 2019 was valued at $1.3 million — for less than $1 million, NBC News reports. Paul Austin in an ABC 7 interview earlier this year described the lowball offer a “slap in the face.” “This time I’m going to guarantee that I’m going to get the appraisal that my house is supposed to get,” Tenisha Tate-Austin told NBC News. Click here to keep reading. |
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