Friday, May 09, 2003
Policy makers use budget to justify civil rights rollback
by Lloyd Nicholas, Contributing Writer (Insight News)

Hours before Velma J. Korbel attends her own formal appointment ceremony as the new human rights commissioner for Minnesota, she has began to frown at budget cuts that slice into the capability of her office to protect low income residents from being denied affordable housing.

“Budget cuts (impact) on the fair housing administration in the state of Minnesota where the institution has less money to do its job, is less capable in getting the word out about affordable housing and to educate the poor about their rights regarding affordable housing and a correlation also exist with ability of the Fair Housing Division (HUD) to build new housing stock,” she announced.

Korbel was a guest speaker on the Conversations with Al McFarlane show, a radio program aired on KMOJ 89.9 FM at Lucille’s Kitchen restaurant on Plymouth Avenue, last Tuesday.

She, however, noted that the Federal Housing and Urban development Department HUD “is not feeling the squeeze as badly and so, there will still be opportunities.”

Jaime Pedraza, director, Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Division of the U.S department of Housing, another guest on the radio program, told Insight News that she agreed with Korbel. “A link exists between the cut backs and the affordable housing initiative,” she explained.

“It is the people of the protected classes, the people of color in particular, single parents, people living with disabilities who constitute the groups who really need a house at a given price range (and if we cut back on our human rights initiative, our complaint investigating, our looking into allegations of housing discrimination) we are going to have more people shut out.”

Vanne Owens Hayes, director of the Minneapolis Civil Rights Department (MCRD), is “concerned about this development as the civil rights movement is being reversed in the process,” she bemoaned.

Her organization’s budget is about 8 percent of the Minneapolis General Fund but, a 19% cut for 2003 left the MCRD with one-fifth less to operate with and in 2004 and additional 22 percent of the remainder is to be sliced.

“We will be able to maintain our core services in 2003 but in 2004 we are faced with the Solomon like choice of either doing complaints or investigation or civilian review authority issues or a hybrid of these options or a modified complaint/investigation process that involves referrals (to the relevant state department),” Owens Hayes said.

W. H Tyrone Terrill, director, City of St. Paul Human Rights Department is angry about the cuts. “I just told the Deputy Mayor last week that if they take two more (workers) from me I am going to tell them to shut my office down.” Terrill explained that over a year ago, he had a staff count of 15; he is now down to eight. “No way can we do our job effectively with one or two investigators,” he said.

The need to address budget shortfalls for the current biennium has led to the proposed budget cuts as Governor Tim Pawlenty attempts to resolve the $4.2 billion state deficit. But both Hayes and Korbel, think the choices being made to balance the budget are deliberate attempts to derail the civil rights movement “as if civil rights is not a priority.”

Terrill had contended that the issue extends beyond mere civil rights matters as “trends now indicate that Blacks will not be able to own homes at the same rate as whites before the year 3025 as a result of inequity in the society that prevents Blacks from owning affordable homes.”

Months earlier, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank (FED) of Minneapolis had indicated that cash subsidies to affected families would solve the affordable housing shortage in the Metropolitan Minneapolis/St. Paul areas.

The Minneapolis FED said, as a rule, policymakers should respond to the high housing cost-to-income ratios by facilitating the ability of low-income households to acquire non-housing necessities like food and medicine since housing cost prevent households from acquiring these other goods and services.

The offer of cash or cash-like subsidies to these households, said the researchers, is the most cost-effective way of assisting low-income households in acquiring the necessities that high housing costs prevent them from purchasing.

The researchers believe that building new housing units appears to be a relatively expensive method of providing low cost housing compared to making it possible for low income homes to meet their other cash needs thereby enabling them to direct other financial reserves to meet their housing needs.

If the problem is too little consumption of non-housing goods, the FED says, the government should increase its support for low-income households’ acquisition of food, utilities, health care, and the other items that high housing costs may limit.
The FED officials contend that a logical response to a high housing cost of housing-to-income ratio is to directly increase the income of low-income households through schemes like earned income tax credit and additional food stamps, health insurance and similar benefits that make non-housing items more attainable.

The FED researchers did not indicate how long it would take for low-income households to acquire homes at the same rate of their richer counterparts through a cash subsidy strategy.
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