View full sizePortland Commissioner Nick Fish oversees the Housing Bureau.Internal emails show Portland officials and the
never intended to enforce the law against landlords who discriminated against black and Latino testers in a housing audit last year.
The documents also show the agencies charged with protecting renters from discrimination worked to appease the association that represents the rental industry, giving it early access to the audit and offering to let it help shape the public message.
At a news conference this morning, P
-- flanked by
, assistant secretary for U.S. Housing and Urban Development, and state
-- will announce a fair-housing plan.
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The announcement will caps weeks in which Fish has insisted that he "always intended to pursue enforcement against select landlords in the audit process." On Thursday, he said the emails don't reflect other conversations or his intent. "It's the difference between saying here is my plan and that I have a plan to pursue enforcement," he said.
But dozens of emails among a policy adviser for Fish,
and her staff show no plan existed before a May article in The Oregonian reported the city had not pursued enforcement. Once officials became aware of the impending article, a flurry of emails shows they were confused about whether they could seek enforcement or where to go.
Before the testing, in April 2010, Fair Housing Council Executive Director Moloy Good emailed a Housing Bureau employee to recommend against enforcement, according to documents obtained through a public-records request.
"I think it would be a good idea to include a robust testing project geared solely for use in conducting the AI (analysis of impediments)," he wrote. "The results would be for informational purposes only, so we would not use them to file formal complaints."
The city contracted with the council, a government-funded nonprofit that investigates claims and enforces fair housing law, to test for discrimination in Portland as part of the AI study, which is required to renew up to $11 million in federal funding. Results from 50 tests conducted July to December -- with discrimination found in 32 -- were forwarded to the city Feb. 3.
Staffers discussed how to "message" the results, and six days later Van Vliet noted in an email to them: "This is only partly about 'messaging.' More fundamentally, it is about our organizational response to disturbing information coming out from our community." Later that day, she wrote that she had just read the entire audit report. "I'm horrified."
Andy Miller, a Housing Bureau manager, sent an email that day outlining possible actions, including sharing the results with the City Council, and state and federal civil rights officials "who have the power and duty to enforce fair housing laws."
But that suggestion received no written response. Attention turned to how to release the results while making sure the
, which represents landlords, wouldn't feel slighted.
On Feb. 17, Good offered to share the results with Deborah Imse, executive director of the housing association, before giving them to the rest of a committee working on the AI study. The committee also included a civil rights attorney and advocates for tenants and communities of color.
"I wanted to give you a preview of the audit testing results," he wrote. "I know we'll discuss these at our committee meeting on 24th, but if you want to chat about them before that please don't hesitate to contact me." Good, attending a conference this week, said in an email that he could not comment before deadline.
A few days later, Housing Bureau spokeswoman Maileen Hamto emailed staff that she wanted to make sure Imse was "feeling the love" when the audit news release came out. Hamto emailed Imse for help in drafting "a fair and balanced view" of the audit results. "Happy to draft a quote, but also feel free to send along your thoughts," she wrote.
When Hamto prepared at the end of March to alert the media about the audit, she emailed Daniel Ledezma, Fish's policy adviser, to tell her she had "intentionally 'buried the lead' so as not to start off with alarm bells."
None of the records mentions concern for other committee members or their opinions of the audit. Elisa Aguilera, co-director of the Community Alliance of Tenants, said she first saw the audit at a committee meeting in March. Van Vliet said Thursday that her agency sought advice from committee members on other issues.
Imse said she doesn't know whether she received special treatment. "I have no particular inside knowledge of how the bureau relates to other folks in situations like this." She acknowledged that her group provides funding to the Fair Housing Council of Oregon but did not say how much.
Van Vliet and Fish defended the city's relationship with Imse's association. "We're not going to get results unless the industry is onboard," Van Vliet said. "She didn't have more power on the committee."
Shanna Smith, president of the
in Washington, D.C., said officials are often reluctant to go after the powerful real estate industry.
Days before The Oregonian's first story on the audit and city inaction -- but after city officials knew it was coming -- emails show top housing officials trying to track down whether the city had contracts with civil rights firms to enforce the law, whether the city could pursue enforcement based on the audit and what discussions on enforcement had occurred.
"I recall that we spun around a bit here thinking we should do something," Van Vliet wrote in an email to staffers May 3. In another: "Did the trail on this go cold after 2/10?"