Initiative aims to help with housing
Legislation would prevent income discrimination
The Oakland County Board of Commissioners will be introducing legislation aimed at preventing source of income housing discrimination, eliminating barriers to fair housing, and immediately expanding access to existing affordable housing.
The Oakland County Fair Housing Initiative is a package of resolutions that will be formally introduced at the board’s April 29 meeting. The initiative includes resolutions to:
• Call on all Oakland County cities, villages and townships to adopt local policy to prohibit SOI housing discrimination; partner with a housing advocate organization to develop a model policy; and educate local elected leaders about the importance of addressing this policy issue.
• Develop a countywide online map, in collaboration with community and county partners, which highlights communities that have adopted local policies banning SOI housing discrimination.
• Create the Oakland County Fair Housing Fund that would provide up to $1 million in grants to local cities, village and townships for fair housing education, enforcement of a SOI housing discrimination policy, and/or other local fair housing efforts.
• Create the Oakland County Landlord Risk Mitigation Fund.
• Support state action to adopt statewide ban SOI housing discrimination.
Source of income housing discrimination prevents residents who participate in the federally funded housing choice voucher
program, or other forms of rental assistance, from accessing housing. The voucher program is the federal government’s program for assisting low-income families, the elderly, and the disabled find their own housing, including singlefamily homes, townhouses and apartments, in the private market.
Board Chair David Woodward (D-Royal Oak) said access to affordable housing is essential to a resilient economy.
“Ending source of income housing discrimination is necessary to increase access to affordable housing,” he said. These innovative ideas are the beginning of steps we can take together to remove barriers to affordable housing and increase opportunities for everyone.”
A number of Michigan communities, including Royal Oak, have adopted ordinances that prohibit source of income discrimination.
Each year, the county receives around $9 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and distributes them countywide through the administration of three local programs including the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program, HOME Investment Partnerships Program (HOME), and the Emergency Solutions Grant
(ESG) Program.
The county’s Neighborhood and Housing Development Division administers the programs that utilizes the federally-allocated dollars. For Program Year 2020, which runs through June, the county received $8.66 million in total HUD funding to support these three programs.
Dana Paglia-King, shortterm housing programs supervisor with the Community Housing Network, said she has seen “countless individuals and families turned down for housing - who were otherwise qualified tenants – only because they needed a voucher or rental subsidy to supplement their rental payments.”
In 2018, HUD officials sent the county a 20-page “letter of noncompliance”
that its housing policies had a “discriminatory effect on non-white households,” who are more likely to be renters. Federal officials stated the county rarely spent federal housing grants on helping low-income residents with rental assistance, but used the majority of the money to assist low-income homeowners.
The communities named in the letter included Pontiac, Southfield, Royal Oak Township, Oak Park and Lathrup Village where the majority of the county’s minority residents live and where the Caucasian populations are less than 50 percent.
As a result, the county entered into a five-year compliance agreement, which expires June 30, 2025, with HUD that required the county to make the following changes to its housing assistance plans and policies:
• Conducting targeted outreach to income-eligible residents, including in racially or ethnically concentrated areas of poverty. This will be done while preparing an Analysis to Fair Housing Choice for submittal to HUD to identify barriers to fair and affordable housing.
• Developing and adopting a Fair Housing Plan to establish goals and outcome measures toward meeting the housing needs of income eligible households.
• Homeowners who reside in owner-occupied rental premises will now be eligible to receive assistance under county’s Home Improvement Program.
Each year, the county receives around $9 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development (HUD) and distributes them countywide through the administration of three local programs including the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program,