Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to speak on Lee amendment No. 3897 that deals with the Federal Fair Housing Act, and I want to describe why many of my colleagues and I are opposed to the amendment. The amendment would eliminate the current affirmative furthering fair housing enforcement regulations promulgated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. I want to go into that.

I will start with a personal story. Before I was in partisan elected politics, I was a civil rights lawyer in Richmond for 17 years. About two-thirds of my legal practice was fair housing cases. I will just tell you the story about my first client and two lessons I learned from my first client that bear upon this amendment.

I had barely hung my diploma on the wall in my office, where I was the junior person among 12 lawyers, when a client was referred to our firm. They did what is often the case; they sent it to the newest person. Somebody needed some help--pro bono assistance. This young woman's name was Loraine.

Loraine was almost exactly my age. I think I was 25 at the time, and she was the same age. I had just moved to a new city and had just gone out to find my apartment in that new city and started my first real job after school. She was kind of in the same place--just out of college, just starting a new job, just looking for an apartment.

Loraine had been at work one day and had read in the newspaper an ad for an apartment in a neighborhood she liked. So she called the landlord and said: Hey, I am really interested in your apartment. Is it still available? Yes, it is available. Could I come over on my lunch hour to take a look? Sure, come on over.

Well, about an hour later she went over to the apartment, and when she met the owner, the owner looked at her and said: Oh, I'm sorry, this place has just been rented.

This was in the fall of 1984.

Loraine drove back to her office and had this sinking suspicion that when the person saw she was African American, maybe that was why suddenly the available apartment turned into one that wasn't available. When she got back to the office, she asked a Caucasian colleague to make a call to the same owner and ask about the apartment. Within 20 minutes the colleague had made the call and asked: Hey, I'm calling about this apartment. Is it still available? The owner, who had just turned Loraine away, said: Sure, it's still available. When do you want to come over and see it?

That was the first lawsuit I drafted. I know I am speaking to a Presiding Officer who is an attorney and who has done the same thing. For the first client who was truly mine, the first pleading I drafted was a Federal fair housing action. With the testimony of the coworker, it was a slam-dunk case. We settled it shortly after we filed it. So in that sense, I don't have a big momentous trial story or anything to tell. Nevertheless, it made a huge impression on me as a brand-new attorney for two reasons. First, in hearing my client tell me the story, I understood more deeply than I ever had how important your home is, how important housing is. I think most of us feel that what is important in life is relationships--not things, not physical objects. But where you live is more like a part of your person than it is a physical thing.

As she described this experience, obviously, that was what made it so painful. But the thing that really stuck with me about this was this: She and I were so similar in many ways--about the same age, excited to be coming out to find a house, having a new job. But my experience--I found an apartment with no problem for my wife and me--was a positive one. But Loraine's experience of being turned away--and then having the sinking suspicion that she was turned away because of her skin color and then finding out that was the case--was a very negative and painful one. What really struck me, as I talked to her, was that the pain was not just the pain of something in the past tense. The pain was also the anticipation: What about the next time I look for a house? What about the next time? Am I going to be faced with this same differential treatment because of the color of my skin?

That first case I had suddenly made me the expert in Virginia on fair housing law--doing one case that was settled within a matter of weeks. So for the next 17 years, this was the heart of my legal practice-- representing people who had been turned away from housing because of their race, disabilities--apartments, houses, mortgages, homeowner's insurance policies. I learned an awful lot when I did it.

One of the things I learned was what a superb piece of legislation the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 is. It was the last of the major pieces of civil rights legislation done in the 1960s. There was the 1964 act of public accommodations, employment discriminations, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 1968, the Federal Fair Housing Act was really the last of those big pieces of Federal legislation. I am proud to say that even over the course of my legal career, from 1984 until I stopped practicing in early 2002, in Virginia and elsewhere there was significant improvement. The Federal Fair Housing Act really did open the doors so that people could live where they wanted to live and as their resources would allow them to live there. Yet, if we just looked at the statistics about residential segregation, in all 50 States, we would see that we still have more work to do. There are still barriers that people face, and some of them are just absolute, sharp, and clear barriers, and some of them are more subtle.

HUD was directed by GAO in 2010 to do a study because they had been encouraged as part of the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 to encourage affirmatively to advance the fair housing mission through agencies that are funded by HUD. The case that I described with Loraine was a private landlord, and that is not necessarily relevant to this topic except to underline how important the law is and how critical housing is. But there are circumstances in which HUD is giving funding to organizations.

I was a mayor, and my city had a housing authority. HUD funding went into the housing authority in my city, just like it goes into housing authorities all around the United States. I was a Governor, and Governors got CDBG funds that came from HUD. So whether it is to a city, county, State, or to a CDBG program that then gets allocated out--even to worthy and strong housing nonprofits--HUD was under a directive when it was funding organizations to make sure they were affirmatively advancing the commands of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. HUD was doing this sort of in fits and starts and in a little bit of an extemporaneous way. In 2010, the GAO said: You have an obligation to affirmatively further fair housing, but you are not exactly doing it the right way. Can you really look at guidance that you can give to your grantees?

Now, this was really important--that Federal grantees get this guidance and affirmatively further fair housing because it wasn't just the private landlords of the world that had done bad things in the housing industry. In fact, there had been a lot of policies of State and local governments, and even the Federal Government, that had cut against fair housing. There were zoning laws that cut against fair housing. There were Federal appraisal standards to get FHA loans that cut against fair housing, and there were other Federal policies that actually cut directly against the goal of allowing people to live where they wanted to live.

So that is the reason why these grantees that are receiving Federal money, are in a unique position to do something about it, and often are inheriting a history where in the past they did the wrong things, need to be encouraged and given clear guidance about how to affirmatively further fair housing.

So to follow the GAO directive, HUD, under this administration--and I give Secretary Castro huge credit for getting this to the goal line-- did the work to come up with clear guidance so that organizations that receive HUD funding know what it means to affirmatively encourage fair housing and so that it is not just a vague platitude or something you pay lip service to but you don't actually do it.

The rule announced by HUD is pretty straightforward. It doesn't mandate changes to local zoning laws. It doesn't require people to move. It doesn't end local control of community planning and development. It allows communities to determine what the best strategies are to comply with the Fair Housing Act. It provides local communities with data and tools that are needed to make fair housing decisions, including allowing local communities to add any relevant local or regional data so that people can understand the effects of their actions.

It does include protected classes in the statute in the larger community planning process. It prevents the use of Federal resources to discriminate against protected classes of individuals. It simplifies compliance with the Fair Housing Act, and this is really important because a lot of small communities don't have a phalanx of lawyers to pour through all the laws and regs. So simplified compliance guidelines are helpful. It does not require grantees to collect new data and data they are not already collecting, and it encourages engagement with the local community, including the real estate industry, residents, developers, and other organizations.

As somebody who was sitting on the other end of this as a mayor, and as somebody who was appointing members to a public housing agency in Richmond, I think this kind of guidance is actually very, very helpful. So I was heartened when the GAO directed HUD to do this work. HUD did a significant period of study and put out guidance under Secretary Castro's leadership. I think it is actually something that is helpful-- not harmful--to those who are receiving HUD funds and should be using HUD funds to advance important goals, including the fair housing goals.

I know the Senator who is proposing the amendment--Lee amendment No. 3897. I know it is well-intentioned, and the intention might be to not put too many burdens and obligations on the shoulders of local planning officials or cities or counties. But as somebody who has been a mayor and been in that spot, guidance is helpful. I actually think this guidance gives clarity in an area where, before the guidance, there was some confusion. I think the guidance strikes the right balance.

I don't know exactly when this is going to be called for a vote. I gather soon. But I just wanted to take the floor and hearken back to the days before I ever knew I would be in politics and I was representing people who desperately needed to just be treated equally to everybody else when it came to their housing. This HUD regulation really furthers that goal in a positive way, and I think we should not eliminate it by accepting Lee amendment No. 3897. So, for that reason, I encourage my colleagues to oppose the amendment.

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