HUD to study anti-gay housing discrimination (how'd I miss this?)

[BR_Parkway]

KAREN HAWKINS | February 24, 2010 05:10 PM EST | AP


CHICAGO — When federal officials studied housing discrimination based on race, the setup was simple: They sent in testers of different backgrounds and gauged how landlords and real estate agents treated people of color compared with whites.

As the government prepares a first-ever study of housing discrimination against gays, however, the issue is more complex. How do you design a study to make an applicant's sexual orientation or gender identity as obvious as race and color?

Starting Thursday, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department will enlist residents in three cities with large gay populations – Chicago, New York and San Francisco – to offer ideas on how such a study should be conducted.

Bias complaints and lawsuits nationwide make clear that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people face housing discrimination, from being turned down for apartments to being steered away from certain neighborhoods, but no one has tried to track how common such bias is. HUD hopes to begin collecting data next year.

"This really is groundbreaking," said Raphael Bostic, HUD's assistant secretary for policy development and research, who's overseeing the study. "Nothing like this has ever been tried before at this scale and certainly not by a federal agency."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20100224/us-housing-sexual-orientation/

[HockeyMom]

1. 5 year ago I went apartment hunting

with my then 26 year old lesbian daughter in NY. She didn't want to go with me. I also had a straight daughter who was away most of the year at college. My gay daughter didn't want to come with me because she said they wouldn't rent to ME if they saw HER.

I have to admit even being only about 35 miles from NYC, it was an eye opener for me. I actually got very beligerent with these landlords, even to the point of taking her birth certificate with me. "Yes, she is my DAUGHTER." "You have a problem with that?" "Talk to ME about it." "I AM PAYING THE RENT."

Very, very hard to believe in the 21st Century and so clode to where the Stonewall Inn is (I went to school down the street from it and remember it well), something like this could still happen.

[Lyric]

2. My sister is living with us right now partly because she was thrown out

of my Mom's house by Mom's bigoted landlord. My sister and I are both lesbians, and when the landlord found out that my sister was gay, he gave my Mom 3 days to get her out. He said, "I'm sorry, but I refuse to have a queer in that house". Mom protested and he changed it to 30 days, but he still refused to budge. Mom's lease is only month-to-month and there are no housing protections out in the rural area where she lives, so there wasn't much we could do other than demand 30 days instead of 3.

It sucks because my sister was living with Mom in order to CARE for her (Mom is disabled and very, very sick) but we didn't have any money for a lawyer to fight it out in court. So she and her kids are living with me and my partner now, and her own partner comes over and stays with us on the weekends. It's hard for everyone, but especially for Mom. There are no caregivers willing to donate their time, Mom is still in the 2-year-delay period in between getting Disability and getting Medicare to pay for a helper, and we can't afford a private nurse. It's just a fucking nightmare. :(