Fair Housing Act anniversary marked in Washington discussion
Brian Gorman, executive director at Southwestern Pennsylvania Legal Services, speaks during a discussion about the Fair Housing Act Wednesday.
Joyce Ellis, executive director of LeMoyne Community Center, speaks during Southwestern Pennsylvania Legal Services’ program for the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act.
In a New York Times op-ed Wednesday, former Vice President Walter Mondale called the Fair Housing Act “the most contested, most ignored and, at times, most misunderstood” of all the civil rights laws that landed on the books in the 1960s.
Those sentiments were echoed by Brian Gorman, executive director of Southwestern Pennsylvania Legal Services. During a lunchtime discussion marking its 50th anniversary at the Center on Strawberry, Gorman said the Fair Housing Act was a milestone for progress in civil rights, but the fights that led to it are still ongoing.
“There’s a real sense among many in America that everything should be fixed and hunky dory now,” Gorman said. “That kind of mindset is a really shallow way of thinking.”
The Fair Housing Act was the third in a series of landmark civil rights laws approved during the administration of President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s. It followed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and was signed by Johnson April 11, 1968. It had been languishing in the committee process on Capitol Hill, but it moved quickly to the president’s desk following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. April 4, 1968.
In a nutshell, the law is designed to protect home buyers or renters from discrimination. The Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to rent or sell a home to anyone based on race, religion and national origin, among other things. The law was expanded to include disabilities in 1991.
Gorman pointed out the federal government was not always a champion of housing integration – public housing created as a result of the New Deal was segregated. “It was the actual policy of our government that races of people should be separated,” he said. This manifested itself in redlining, where banks would not provide the same mortgages to black customers as their white counterparts. The result was largely black neighborhoods and communities being deprived of investment.
Southwestern Pennsylvania Legal Services oversees the Fair Housing Law Center in Washington, and its program manager, Kristie Horrell, said that much of their work now centers on people with disabilities. In 1968, when the Fair Housing Act initially became law, people with disabilities were not part of the equation.
“They didn’t fight for people with disabilities,” she explained. “People with disabilities were not treated as real people.”
Gorman said legislation of the importance and scope of the Fair Housing Act would not have been possible without the perseverance of people like King, who was in the trenches when it came to the civil rights legislation of his time.
“He got stuff done,” Gorman said. “He wasn’t just out there giving speeches. To the extent that anything needs to be done (today), the 1960s civil rights era is a model we need to revisit.”