(left to right)Chicago Department of Health LGBT director Simone Koehliner, U.S. Housing
and Urban Development Assistant Secretary Raphael Bostic, and HUD soecial assistant Rebecca
Parks,listen to housing discrimination concerns.HUD is about begin a study on housing
discrimination against gay, lesbian,bisexual, and transgendered individuals this year.
Post-Exchange/JAMIE LOO

Housing discrimination against gays to be studied

Chicago hosts first listening session in preparation for national survey.

By Jamie Loo, First Amendment reporter

March 8, 2010

CHICAGO— The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is doing a national survey on housing discrimination against the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered community and kicked off their efforts in the city.

Federal officials came to the Chicago at the end of February to listen to housing discrimination concerns from the GLBT community. HUD Assistant Secretary Raphael Bostic said the department conducts a comprehensive housing discrimination survey every 10 years on various groups and that this will be the first time the GLBT community will be studied. Bostic said the listening sessions will help them gather information and get feedback on what data and collection methods will work best for the study.

Advocates at the meeting said many GLBT persons face discrimination after they get housing. Some landlords will ignore cries for help from GLBT persons who are harassed by neighbors and in some cases the landlords themselves are the aggressors.

Bonnie Wade, associate director of the LGBTQ Host Home Program, which works with LGBTQ youth who are homeless or have unstable housing, has worked with many youth who have had trouble getting housing. Wade said a few years ago she spent weeks helping a transgendered young woman find an apartment. The young woman eventually found an apartment, Wade said, but she faced harassment by others in her building including being propositioned for sex. She eventually moved out of state to live with a family member.

Helena Bushong, chair of Illinois Gender Advocates, said transgendered individuals have a unique set of challenges searching for housing such as having two government identifications. A transgendered person’s Social Security card has the gender the person was born with and the state identification has their gender change. Bushong said when landlords run background checks on housing applicants this often becomes an issue.

Although Chicago’s anti-discrimination codes include sexual orientation, the federal Fair Housing Act does not include this language. This makes it more difficult for discrimination complaints to be investigated by agencies and to be heard in the court system. Many smaller cities and jurisdictions also don’t have sexual orientation or gender identity in their human rights codes.

Senior director of programs at the Center on Halsted, Courtney Reid, said she knows an African-American transgendered person who has received both verbal and physical attacks while living in a Chicago Housing Authority residence. Although she has filed complaints, Reed said no action has been taken because it is HUD housing.

Oak Park Regional Housing Center executive director, Rob Breymaier, said another legal issue that caused problems for GLBT persons in finding housing is zoning ordinances. Many local zoning ordinances have “family” definitions which often prohibit two unrelated people from living together in certain types of housing. This basic language becomes discriminatory for LGBT couples looking for housing.

Hope Barrett, director of elder services at the Howard Brown Health Center, said many elderly GLBT persons live in public housing and that in the next 30 years the overall number of GLBT adults nationally will increase three fold. Many elderly GLBT want to stay in their homes, Barrett said, and are afraid to move to assisted living homes or nursing homes because of fears of mistreatment, rejection by other residents and staff. Barrett said assisted living facilities and concerns of the elderly should be part of this study.

About 5 percent of annual filings received by the city’s Commission on Human Relations are based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Bill Greaves, liaison to Mayor Richard Daley and director of Advisory Council on LGBT issues, said HUD should include sexual orientation and gender identity in federal law. Greaves said they receive many phone calls about GLBT housing discrimination complaints that never become formal filings with the city. These are often people who have successfully rented, purchased a home or have moved into an assisted living facility, and then face discrimination later from landlords and neighbors.

“This was great,” Bostic said of the listening session. “It was substantive, thoughtful and provides some real insights that is going to help us design a study that gets some real good findings.”

Listening sessions were also held in New York and San Francisco. Bostic said HUD is also setting up a Web site to gather information from people on this issue. He said preliminary study results will be ready in spring 2011 with the final report coming out in late summer that year.