HUD: Fair Housing must be part of recovery

Date: 7/20/2011

July 20, 2011

By G. Michael Dobbs

Managing Editor

SPRINGFIELD — John Trasviña, the assistant secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity in the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) came to Springfield last week not only to see the damage from the June 1 tornado personally, but also to underscore the importance of Fair Housing laws and principles.

“It’s very important as Springfield rebuilds, it involves everybody,” Trasviña told a gathering of city officials, clergy and neighborhood activists. “We want to make sure everyone has equal access and equal opportunity.”

Trasviña’s visit came a day after the announcement of a advisory board largely comprised of people from tornado damaged neighborhoods that will help guide the development of a comprehensive rebuilding plan.

Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination Commissioner Jamie Williamson noted that her neighborhood — Maple High Six Comers, one of those hit by the tornado — had a high concentration of poverty. She said that 44 percent of the residents live under the poverty line and home ownership is at only 17 percent. The tornado destroyed many rental units, displacing those residents.

In the discussion of rebuilding the affected neighborhoods, Williamson said this is now a time to place the people seeking a new home in “high opportunity areas ...to improve their lives.”

She said the goal is for economic, ethnic and racial integration. “We have to rethink everything. This is the opportunity,” she said.

Charles Rucks, the executive director of Springfield Neighborhood Housing Services and also a resident of the Maple High neighborhood, said the tornado was “very even handed” in its destruction.

“Recovery needs to be even handed as well,” Rucks said. He added there seemed to him to be differences in the level of recovery work in his neighborhood as compared to the Plumtree Road area.

He called for a coordinated approach that included Fair Housing requirements and community development.

Geraldine McCafferty, the city’s director of Housing, said the challenge is to rebuild the neighborhoods with a mixture of affordable housing for low income residents as well as market rate units to encourage greater diversity in the city.

Farm Workers Council president, chairman and CEO Heriberto Flores told Trasviña the city needs jobs and the violence in the city is coming out of unemployment. Flores said the HUD Section Three requiring recipients of HUD funding to hire low income people is “a very important weapon” against discrimination.

If a person believes that he or she has been the victim of discriminatory housing practices call 1-800-699-9777.