Advocates Are Highlighting Black Homeownership for National Housing Month

McKenzie Jackson | California Black Media (CBM) – The California Civil Rights Department (CRD) won a $10,000 fair housing settlement last November against a property management company, CIM Group LP, a global real estate company headquartered in Los Angeles, and property owner, RACR Sora, LLC, for implementing a blanket ban on renting to tenants with criminal histories at Sora Apartments in Inglewood. That illegal policy led to a number of Black applicants being rejected. Three months earlier, the department, which enforces California’s civil rights laws, won another $20,000 civil rights settlement against a Lemon Grove property manager, who had targeted a Black tenant with a series of racist actions and threats of violence. CRD Director Kevin Kish said the department investigates cases of apparent racial bias in housing and sometimes more subtle acts of prejudice like nuisance-free or crime-free housing policies or holding tenants to different standards based on their race. “You see no crime ordinances used in a discriminatory way,” he explained. “People will get evicted if they call the police. This can negatively impact victims of domestic violence. We also see these no crime ordinances, or no crime policies, used in racially discriminatory ways. If there is some...