Suffolk Law School behind anti-discrimination effort

Suffolk Law School's use of sting operations to crack down on housing discrimination in the Boston area was hailed by a top HUD official yesterday.

"They are very critical in the work they do to protect fair housing rights, help HUD advance our goals for fair and inclusive housing in the Boston area," HUD assistant secretary Gustavo Velasquez said, after speaking at Suffolk's Fair Housing Conference.

Using a HUD grant, Suffolk's Housing Discrimination Testing Program conducts undercover operations to expose housing discrimination. Posing as potential renters, one person will say they have children and another will not. If there are any differences in treatment, the case is referred to HUD.

"Nowadays it's very hard to prove discrimination in housing," Velasquez said. "Most of the discrimination happens in subtle ways, not the in-your-face discrimination we used to encounter."

Attorney General Maura Healey's office announced a $17,500 settlement with Coldwell Banker last month after a real-estate agent directed families with children away from landlords who did not want to pay to remove lead in their walls. Testing by Suffolk led to the judgment.

"The Housing Discrimination Testing Program has become an invaluable partner to the work of the Civil Rights Division in a relatively short period of time," Healey said at the conference.

In fiscal year 2014, HUD and HUD-funded agencies reported handling 200 new cases of housing discrimination in Massachusetts, and closed another 297 cases. Nearly half of the new cases were disability-related, while close to a quarter were racial discrimination.

Velasquez said his office also focuses on unintentional discrimination, including a recent town ordinance in Berlin, N.H., that gave landlords the right to evict anyone who had police come to their residence three times. The rule discriminated against domestic abuse victims, HUD said.

"This ordinance, neutral on its face, had a discriminatory effect," said Daniel Weaver, fair housing enforcement chief for HUD's Region 1, which includes Boston and New Hampshire. "A woman could have her home invaded by her previous boyfriend and decide she just can't call police."

The ordinance was changed to include an exception for domestic violence victims.

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