Urban and Rural Development

By Harold Moon

Vol. 2, No. 1, 1979, pp. 23

The status of equal opportunity in housing will be greatly influenced by two contrasting changes presently underway in Washington. One endangers the reporting of vital information needed to test compliance with civil rights laws and the other proposes to enlarge the enforcement effects of the government to insure fair housing.

The first change involves the decision by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to no longer require recipients of its Community Development Block grants to submit data on race and sex in their progress reports on federally funded projects. In its effort to reduce paperwork at the request of the Office of Management and Budget, HUD has drawn heated objections from civil rights organizations because of its “abdication of the agency’s responsibility” to evaluate and determine the actual equal opportunity performance of a project.

The deletion of the Grantee Performance Report (GPR), a major document to evaluate exactly how a local community has allocated its grant funds, would deeply cripple the enforcement ability of HUD and side-step the Civil Rights Act of 1968. The GRP closely monitors and indicates by demographics if minorities and females are sharing in the fruits of the program. Although a grantee is required to comply with civil rights laws and regulations, the elimination of supportive data of race and sex will not provide HUD with sufficient information.

“We do not believe that the mandate to reduce paperwork was ever intended to be at the expense of the national commitment to assure non-discrimination and equal opportunity,” said the Housing Task Force of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

Furthermore, LCCR’s Housing Task Force argued that the elimination of the required information violates HUD’s own regulations and manuals as well as the provision of the civil rights laws.

The second change – this one only proposed – would amend Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 which makes it unlawful in the sale, rental or financing of housing to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin or sex. The current statute has been hard to enforce and the proponents are attempting to strengthen the legislation in light of recent evidence of non-enforcement.

A survey of 3,000 brokers and rental agents in 40 metropolitan areas recently found that a Black person stands a 62 percent chance of encountering discrimination when seeking to buy a house and a 75 percent chance when seeking to rent. The Department of Justice has assigned merely 13 attorneys to assist HUD in investigating all of the nation’s housing discrimination practices.

Outgoing HUD Secretary Patricia Harris recently told Congress, “The lack of adequate enforcement power has been the most serious obstacle to the development of an effective fair housing program within HUD.

Our present authority is limited to a purely voluntary process of conference, conciliation and persuasion.”

Proponents are attempting to amend the 1968 Act with the Fair Housing Amendment of 1979 which calls for an additional 2.6 million dollars for enforcement and changes in the law’s coverage.

The amendment would give HUD the authority to conduct hearings, present evidence and issue binding orders – such as the cease and desist orders. The charges would also include the handicapped among those protected from discrimination and eliminate some exemptions now allowed.

In his January 1979 State of the Union message, President Jimmy Carter added his support to urge increasing HUD’s authority, “Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 remains largely an empty promise because of the lack of adequate enforcement mechanisms,” remarked the President. “We need to amend the Fair Housing Act to remove the burden and expense of enforcing the law from the shoulders of the poor victims of housing discrimination.”

Unfortunately, unless momentum is gained, Washington observers expect the reporting requirements to be revised and the fair housing amendment to fail. For more information, write: Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, 2027 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.

Economic Development

By Harold Moon

Vol. 2, No. 2., 1979, pp. 23

More than half of the 11 Southern states are ranked among the worst in the nation in administering fair and equitable taxes according to a recent report of a public employee’s organization.

Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana and Kentucky are ranked 51st, 50th, 48th, 47th, 46th, and 43rd, respectively. Closely following the ten worst states were South Carolina (40th), Florida (33rd) and Virginia (32nd). Only Georgia (13th) and North Carolina (15th) were near the top ten states.

All 50 states including the District of Columbia were ranked in five specific areas of taxation; sales, personal income, business, property and general administration. The ranking measured from 1 (best) to 51st (worst) in a recent published report by the Coalition of America Public Employees entitled Tax Equity in the Fifty States co-authored by Diane Fuchs and Steve A. Rabin.

Louisiana was included among the best in the administration of sales tax, considered the most regressive form of tax. Forty-five percent of the Southern states, however, were ranked among the worse in the sales tax structures.

In personal income tax, the most equitable form of taxation, 27 percent of the Southern states fell into the worst states category.

On an annual basis states have collectively been losing more than $3 billion a year due to poor and uneven taxation of businesses who have cleverly avoided paying an equitable proportion of taxes annually. The uneven taxation of businesses has resulted in individual states placing higher taxes on personal income, property and sales taxes.

Though property tax is a main source of local, not state revenue, and, for the most part, is levied and administered on a local level, the assessing of full property value is sometimes not achieved on an equitable basis. Also, intangible forms of “property” such as stocks, bonds, money on deposit, and securities escape full assessment of value and, thereby, provide loopholes for the wealthy and a “burden on homeowners and renters.” Thirty-six percent of the Southern states have closely monitored and featured legislation to curb abuse in the property tax spectrum: Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and Kentucky were tied for the ninth position. The top ten is rounded out by Oregon, Wisconsin, Michigan, Maryland, Iowa and California. Forty-five percent of the Southern states ranked in the bottom tier: Louisiana (51st), Montana, Wyoming, Alabama (48th), Texas (46th), Mississippi (46th), Idaho, North Dakota, Delaware and Tennessee (42nd).

Better administration by states of existing tax laws in individual states could lead to eliminating the need for “additional taxes or higher rates”. The close monitoring of “how much is ‘spent’ each year” on tax breaks is one conceivable remedy. Another suggested in the survey, would be for states to cooperate on a joint effort to enforce and administer a multistate tax law where states jointly audit businesses and individuals who must pay taxes in different states. The study estimates that each state would pick up $31 in added tax revenue for every one dollar spent in extra expense.