Housing Discrimination Victims May Suffer Trauma, Studies Say

August 04, 1985|By Steve Kerch.

Victims of housing discrimination who refuse to come forward may suffer the same kind of psychological trauma that befalls victims of other emotionally-scarring crimes such as rape, according to studies that fair housing advocates are using to spur reporting of complaints.

In the southern suburbs, that message is one of several contained in a blitz of promotional literature which is being prepared by the Park Forest-based South Suburban Housing Center in an effort to boost fair housing activity in a 37-town region.

``We have so much evidence of discrimination coming from our testing program that we know what must be happening to the real homeseekers and we`re just not hearing about it,`` said Nancy Triezenberg Fox, who as the housing center`s audit coordinator supervises the matched pairs of black and white

``testers`` who seek to document local real estate practices.

The $72,000 campaign is being funded by an obscure federal department of Housing and Urban Development program that makes grants available to local communities which have fair housing laws ``substantially equivalent`` to strict federal laws.

The housing center is carrying out the program under contract with Park Forest, which has just joined north suburban Evanston in winning $200,000 from HUD to fund a study that could lead to creation of a comprehensive metropolitan fair housing strategy.

These Fair Housing Assistance Programs, as HUD has designated them, are an experimental attempt to shift the burden of enforcing fair housing laws away from Washington and toward local municipalities. By examining the psychological consequences of housing discrimination, SSHC officials hope to increase public awareness of fair housing laws and draw out more

discrimination victims.

``Housing discrimination is a very underreported crime; people just don`t come forward,`` said Anne Brady, education coordinator for the housing center. ``A lot of people don`t react the first time it happens. Sometimes they have to be discriminated against numerous times before they even realize they have been a victim.

``But it`s a very harmful thing to a victim, like any other victim of emotional abuse. We have found that some of the symptoms a housing

discrimination victim goes through are similar to those experienced by a rape victim,`` Brady said.

Dr. James Titchener, a psychiatrist at Cincinnati General Hospital who has studied the psychological trauma that befalls victims of discrimination, has come to a similar conclusion.

``One of the factors you have to look at is the meaning of the house to people,`` Titchener said. ``The house can be an extension of the self, have a deep emotional significance. People get attached to the place they live in.`` ``In the first case that called my attention to the problem I saw a couple who were just about to get married and buy their first house. They were on an emotional high; a feeling a lot of people have before they get married, like everybody loves you. To be told you can`t have the house you have dreamed about because you are black is exactly the opposite message you want to hear at that time.``

Dr. Titchener has examined nearly 70 discrimination victims across the country, including several from the Chicago area, in the last year. Two-thirds of those were patients who were discriminated against in their choice of housing.

Titchener got involved in the unusual field at the request of an attorney who needed testimony to bolster civil rights claims before juries hearing lawsuits brought by housing discrimination victims. Titchener said that while discrimination victims were winning jury verdicts, they often were awarded small monetary damages because of a belief on the juries` part that no great harm had occured.

``But that kind of discrimination can be a tremendous blow to self esteem. And it`s an unrecoverable blow. What can a person do about it? Housing discrimination because of race makes no sense to the victim at all,`` he said. Housing discrimination was outlawed in the 1968 federal Fair Housing Act, which made it a civil crime to refuse to rent or sell or otherwise make unavailable a dwelling to a person because of race.

While the law charges the U.S. departments of Housing and Urban Development and Justice with enforcement, private fair housing groups such as the SSHC have taken up much of the burden of bringing discrimination cases before the courts.

``The emotional injury a discrimination victim suffers from is just as real and tangible as any other personal injury under the law,`` said John Petruszak, staff attorney for the housing center. ``As with any other type of injury, there should be a recovery of monetary damages to `make whole` the victims of an act of discrimination.``

For housing discrimination victims, going to court is just what the doctor orders.