Starting at around noon (eastern) on Sunday, June 7th and continuing through noon on Tuesday, June 9th, we'll be live blogging from the National Fair Housing Alliance's annual conference. This year's conference, entitled "Fair Housing in the 21st Century: Realizing a More Perfect Union" (link to agenda, .pdf) is taking place at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill.

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1:05pm - The doors are opened and the room quickly begins to fill up. This year's regular line-up of Prof. Bob Schwemm and John Relman has expanded by one this year - they are joined by Prof. Rigel C. Oliveri of the University of Missouri.

1:10pm - NFHA's president and CEO Shanna Smith takes the podium to welcome everyone to the official start of the conference and recognize the sponsors of this year's event: MORA Financial Mortgage Services, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, Ocwen Financial Corporation, Bank of America, Relman & Dane, Saxon Mortgage Services, National Association of Realtors, PMI Mortgage Insurance Company, and MetLife Auto & Home..

1:17pm - Schwemm opens noting that the most significant event in civil rights since last year's conference happened on a Tuesday last November; loud applause from the audience.

1:22pm - "Life is different in 2009." Schwemm explains that unlike in years past when fair housing advocates would review potential ammendments to the FHA or pending civil rights laws and cringe, this year there are a number of ammendments and statutes that may expand fair housing rather than shrink it.

1:31pm  - Schwemm notes that there are three or four areas of the FHA that need increased regulations. Advocates should be pushing HUD to adopt regulations so that there can be deference to said regulations by the courts.

1:35pm - Schwemm points out that the Supreme Court is still a dangerous place for fair housing and civil rights, and explains that the potential implications of mandatory arbitration preempting the filing of civil rights cases in court could have enormous impacts on being able to pursue lenders and other financial institutions outside of arbitration (14 Penn Plaza LLC v. Pyett).

1:38pm - Noting that one of the methods of evaluation of professors like himself is the number of times their articles are downloaded, Schwemm hypes his newest article - noting that it is not about fair housing but rather slavery and race relations.

1:42pm - John Relman speaks up for the first time, congratulating his coworker Steve Dane on becoming a grandfather for the first time and welcoming Rigel to the discussion. Relman than speaks about his work on Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Center v. St Bernard Parish, providing a short summary of the case. St Bernard passed an ordinance right after Hurricane Katrina that limited property owners to only renting to blood or marriage relatives. Since the Parish was nearly all white, this ordinance essentially limited it to whites only. Court action compelled the parish to rescind the ordinance, but shortly after they passed a moratorium on multi-family housing in the parish and denied a mixed-income housing development. Relman and the GNOFHAC went back to court and said that the moratorium was discriminatory in its affect and impact, successfully convincing a judge that teh ordinance was discriminatory. Unfortunately, the parish is still denying the right of multi-family housing developers to build and advocates are planning a motion to find the parish in contempt.

1:52pm - Relman discusses the huge victory in Kennedy v. Zanesville (which we covered last year here).

2:00pm - Rigel Oliveri speaks for the first time on the awful Halperin issue - a case in which a judge ruled that even though a tenant was being harassed by their landlord based on their religion because the harassment occurred after they obtained the housing the Fair Housing Act no longer applied. She relates a story of getting handed the decision just before motion arguments in a sexual harassment case and then being pushed to present oral arguments about the case. The crux of her argument? She called it "preposterous".

2:18pm - Relman relates the story of Johns v. Stilwell, in which a landlord who lived far from his property in Virginia found out a few years after they initially moved in that his tenants the Johns were African American. The landlord told them he would be rehabbing the property and they needed to move out by the end of June 2005. But on June 6th, while the Johns were away at a funeral, the landlord removed all of their property, piled it in the driveway, and burned it - all while drinking beers, shooting guns, and calling Mr. Johns "boy". The trial just wrapped up - Relman & Dane secured a handsome financial settlement for the Johns although there were a number of problems in the trial judge's ruling. 

2:24pm - The panel turns to section 3604(c) and Internet Advertising, an area of particular interest to this author. Oliveri begins the discussion by saying that she anticipates there will be (or needs to be) some kind of legislative fix before chronicling the history of the issue and the CLCCRUL v. craigslist case. As the law stands now, if the website does not originate any of the content than they are not liable for the content of the ads - which is why in the Roommates case the courts have found the website liable for the discriminatory preferences they compel users to enter when they create ads and blocks users with certain profiles from seeing certain ads.

2:33pm - Relman gives a brief overview of the lending issues that have confronted fair housing advocates. He outlines the different foci of Baltimore and Cleveland municipal-led fair housing complaints against lenders. In Cleveland, the city argues that lenders knew their loan products were predatory because their exotic mortgage products would not work in a city like Cleveland where housing prices were decreasing (meaning that home buyers who had teaser rates would not have equity to refinance). In Baltimore, the city alleges that the impact of lending practices targeted certain neighborhoods and have an enormous impact on the city - and can be recouped from the predatory lenders. Relman, whose firm is representing Baltimore, recounts how they just filed declarations with the court that Wells Fargo incented its loan officers to target minority neighborhoods for subprime loans. The full story can be found here.

2:50pm - In the closed attorneys' session this morning there was considerable time spent on the Westchester case, so Relman gives a brief summary (background here).The trial was initially set for May 4th, but the federal government has asserted its role in the case and an agreement in principal has been reached between all of the parties. The government is now in the process of putting together a consent decree, which must be approved prior to July 6, 2009.

2:58pm - Oliveri addresses sex and sexual harassment cases of the last year. She details the "good result" of Quigley v. Winter to note that it is now on appeal based on the Halperin issue. She also cites some HUD regulations originally written in 2000 that have never been officialy adopted, but are actually positive on this issue (24 CFR sec100.500: 65 Fed Reg 67668 [11-18-00]).

3:02pm - the room takes a break...

3:19pm - Schwemm calls the room to order and briefly reviews group home cases before addressing reasonable accomodations and design & construction cases broadly. He then pitches to Relman, who talks about the specific challenges of statute of limitations precedent in design & construction cases brought by private fair housing centers. Both NFHA and the Equal Rights Center targeted specific builders for multi-state investigations of design and construction problems at their respective properties. But the 9th Circuit in Garcia stated that the 2-year statute of limitations clock starts ticking the day that construction on the building was completed. The ERC case argues that because there was a pattern of the same violations around the country again and again, then it became a continuing violation and so the Garcia issue was moot. (Note: the feds don't have this statute of limitations issue as they are specifically exempted from it.)

3:42pm - Oliveri addresses the now waning phenomenon of municaplities passing ordinances aimed at making life more difficult for undocumented (and in many cases documented) immigrants. She's written an article on this: Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Landlords, Latinos, Anti-Illegal Immigrant Ordinances, and Housing Discrimination.

3:48pm - Someone from the audience chimes in that Oklahoma has passed HB 1804, an anti-immigrant ordinance that is already driving Latinos from the state.

3:53pm - Schwemm details the positive ruling about proving discrimination from Keck v. Graham Hotel Systems. Blacks who were getting married were treated differently than whites in how their receptions and accomodations were handled. The fair housing center in Ann Arbor actually tested the issue (editors note: amazing!!!) and provided evidence of discrimination.

4:00pm - Relman discusses Inclusive Communities Project v. Texas Dept of Housing & Community Affairs, a case in which a non-profit organization challenged the allocations of tax credit properties that were being awarded to different affordable housing providers, claiming that they were being approved in places that already had significant minority populations so they were perpetuating segregation. The key element to note is that a court found that the actions of the Dept of Housing and Community Affairs frustrated the mission and diverted the resources of a non-profit organization that wasn't actually applying for affordable housing funding.

4:10pm - Relman and Schwemm run through a variety of HUD and litigation procedural issues that this non-attorney won't pretend to understand well enough to capture intelligently on this blog...

[editors note: I'll be headed to Ben's Chili Bowl this evening around 6pm for my obligatory visit during a DC trip; if you'd like to join me send me a message and we'll figure out logistics]

4:21pm - Calling it "the happiest moment" of the conference, Schwemm passes the mic to Relman who will summarize the major fair housing settlements of the past year. Of note:
-$775k for victims of Manassas, VA's anti-immigrant discrimination and harassment (Equal Rights Center);
-$275k for female victims of their landlord's sexual harassment, brought by the Texas Workforce Commission and Brancart & Brancart were the lead attorneys;
-$9.6m for victims of Zanesville's refusal to extend municipal water service (referenced above);
-and $1.375m for the Idaho AIDS Foundation after the Idaho Housing and Finance Association required them to provide private medical records as a condition of receiving funding, worked on by Relman & Dane.

4:37pm - Relman reviews a number of DOJ settlements in the past year, including the unique partnership between the Fair Housing Center of Metro Detroit and DOJ. This partnership was on display in US v. Regent Court Apartments, which secured more than $150k in damages and penalties. DOJ led the litigation and FHC of Detroit provided investigative support and testers. This is the tenth case out of this partnership in the last decade.

4:50pm - NFHA's Smith takes the stage to wrap-up the first day of the conference. Check back in tomorrow morning for continued live blogging from the conference.