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

Floor Speech

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Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I appreciate seeing the Presiding Officer in the chair and having a ``Corey'' represented and presiding over the U.S. Senate.

I rise today to speak against an amendment now pending to this bill that would block a rule that seeks to fulfill the promise of the Fair Housing Act. This issue is very deeply personal to me and one that really has defined my own personal history. I would like to start by telling a story.

In 1969, just 1 year after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, a couple here in Washington, DC, married with two boys, decided to move to New Jersey. In New Jersey, they encountered a lot of a practice called real estate steering, where Black couples were steered away from certain neighborhoods.

Realizing they were being steered away from White neighborhoods, they grew frustrated, and they sought the help of the fair housing council. They set up an elaborate sting operation where my parents would go look at a home--or this couple would go look at a home--and they would then be followed by a White couple. The couple was told the house was sold or it was not for sale. The White couple would then appear and find out if that was, indeed, true. Most often for this couple from Washington, DC, yes, they would find out the house was still for sale.

Eventually this couple found a house they loved in a small town called Harrington Park, NJ, but they were told that the house was not for sale. They were told the house had been pulled off the market or sold. They left. Then the White couple came behind them. Lo and behold, the house had not been sold or was not pulled off the market. The White couple pretended that they loved the house as the Black couple did and put a bid on the house. The bid was accepted.

On the day of the closing, instead of the White couple showing up, the African-American gentleman from the Black couple and a volunteer lawyer came to confront the real estate agent. The real estate agent was so upset that he stood up and punched the lawyer representing the Black couple and sicced his dog on the African-American man. Yet the law was on their side. The fair housing law of the United States of America, the law of the Federal Government, was on their side.

Eventually, that Black couple and their two kids moved into that home in Harrington Park, NJ. That was 1969. It was the year I was born, and that couple was my parents, Cary and Carolyn Booker. That is my origin story. Legislation that this body passed empowered my family to move into the home of their dreams in an all-White neighborhood with incredibly good schools that I went through from K-12. I am the beneficiary of work this body did to ensure that our American values are preserved, our values of inclusion and integration, to make sure fair housing is the law of the land. That work gave me my start in life. The activism of local activists, combined with the law of the land as passed by us, defined my path.

After decades of struggle in communities across the country, we have largely been successful in banning overt housing discrimination. We should be proud of our work. But legislation that we passed should not become a relic of history. It is not something for us to turn and admire. We all know on many issues the cause of freedom and the cause of justice necessitate constant vigilance.

So I rise today with the knowledge that while major pieces of civil rights legislation like the Fair Housing Act have had a significant impact on millions of Americans--White, Black, Latino, Asian, disabled--this has had a full impact. We still have work to do to continue that vigilance to make sure that those values, those ideals, and the law of the land are made real for families.

Unfortunately, for nearly 50 years there has not been real guidance, direction, or tools to help local officials achieve the goals of the Fair Housing Act, which are integrated housing, fair housing, equal access. In 2010, in fact, the Government Accountability Office found that the Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, failed to properly administer oversight obligations under the Fair Housing Act and failed to monitor its guarantees for compliance with the law.

In 2013, HUD proposed affirmatively furthering fair housing, a new rule that would seek to fulfill the promise of the Fair Housing Act and eliminate a lot of the historic patterns of segregation that still go on in America today. The vision for the rule is to institute a data- driven analysis of localities and to develop Federal grant programs for housing and economic inclusion.

When I was mayor, people came to me with passions and accusations and the like. I used to always say: In God we trust, but, everybody else, bring me data. It is important to look at the numbers to know what really is going on.

So HUD brought about this idea of making sure we have that data--not in a rushed process. The administration engaged in a diligent 2-year rulemaking process with public inclusion, participation from others, and lots of public comment periods. They finalized that rule in July 2015.

It is unfortunate that one of my dear colleagues--somebody whom I value very much because we do a lot of work across the aisle--has introduced an amendment that would block this rule's implementation, and I must respectfully disagree with the intent of this amendment. The Fair Housing Act and, really, the entirety of the Civil Rights Act were meant, again, to be real today, not just relics of yesterday. They were meant to be guideposts and standards by which we hold ourselves accountable for the values we put forth.

The affirmatively further fair housing rule is a measure of accountability for HUD and for ourselves. You cannot change what you cannot measure. Let me say that again. I learned this as a manager: If you can't measure it, you can't change it or affect it.

The rule will arm communities most in need with knowledge and numbers so they can make intelligent local decisions and best apply their resources. It is what everyone who has to manage something needs: accurate data. It will improve the access to quality data on local demographics and streamline the process for analyzing local fair housing impediments, helping grantees establish their own local fair housing priorities. This rule does not interfere with local zoning or housing laws, and it prevents further taxpayer dollars from being used to discriminate.

Every stakeholder--every one of us--is afforded an opportunity to comment on the rule that HUD made, and, as a former local leader, it empowers people at the localities to do justice by their communities. This is a balanced and a measured rule, and it takes up the cause of the work to make our country more and more just.

I know personally that so much of the character of our country comes from the values we have as a whole. There are rare times in our history where this body is called upon to affirm those values. This body's history--the noble history of this body--is something I have benefited from personally around fair housing. Now we have more tools necessary, with big data and analysis, to more effectively and affirmatively assert our values and ensure injustice is not being done.

I want to make sure that we defeat this amendment for those reasons. I believe and know the values of my colleague who proposed this. I do not think it achieves the end that we want to see by disempowering people to try to help families like mine. I was a child in DC moving to New Jersey and found justice--found a pathway toward integration. Indeed, I doubt I would be here right now if it weren't for the laws of our land.

I hope we can defeat this amendment and ensure that our Nation becomes more fair and more just and that more families like mine can find the America we hail when we pledge allegiance to the flag and say we are a Nation of liberty and justice for all.
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