A civil rights group is suing Washington state in federal court over a homeownership program that aids people only if they belong to specific racial categories.
The defendant is Steve Walker, executive director of the Washington State Housing Finance Commission (WSHFC).
The commission, which the Washington Legislature established in 1983, created the Washington Covenant Homeownership Program in July. The program provides down payment and closing cost assistance to would-be home buyers in the form of a zero-interest secondary mortgage loan. Recipients pay back their loans with the funds generated when they sell or refinance the homes they purchased.
But only people who are black, Hispanic, Native American, Alaskan native, Native Hawaiian or “other Pacific Islander,” Korean, or Asian Indian are eligible for the program. The loan applicant or the person’s parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent must have lived in the state before April 1968, according to the legal complaint.
This means that people who do not belong to “a preferred race,” such as “Japanese-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Arab-Americans, and Caucasian-Americans, are categorically ineligible for the Program.”
President Lyndon Johnson signed the federal Fair Housing Act in April 1968, which forbids discrimination in housing based on race and other criteria.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said the state’s Covenant Homeownership Act aimed to remedy past injustices.
He signed the law in May 2023, which directed the commission to create “programs to reduce racial disparities in homeownership in the state by providing down payment and closing cost assistance,” according to the complaint.
“This is a great day for Washington state and a great day for justice,” Inslee said when he signed the law.
“It is terrible to think our wonderful state, the Evergreen state, at one time had these racial covenants that prevented people from getting access to housing. And that wasn’t that long ago. I was 16 years of age and this was still going on with enforceable covenants preventing a person of non-white heritage from getting housing.”
“This program finally takes a step toward righting those wrongs by creating a new path to homeownership.”
FAIR, which is represented by Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), is arguing that the program violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
A member of FAIR who has lived in the state since before April 1968, meets the income requirement, and wants to purchase a home, would qualify for the program except for the fact that she identifies as “European-American,” according to the complaint.
The program requires a homebuyer to provide documentation to establish her race but does not require her to prove that she or her ancestors “personally experienced racial discrimination when attempting to buy a home,” the complaint states.
PLF attorney Andrew Quinio told The Epoch Times: “If this program is meant to remedy past discrimination, but applicants aren’t asked if they’ve ever faced discrimination, it seems a bit of a disconnect if you’re not directly trying to target the people that would be victims of housing discrimination.
“The state of Washington and the Washington Housing Finance Commission cannot, as government entities, classify individuals on the basis of race.
“They cannot especially disadvantage individuals on the basis of race, and that is exactly what this program does.”
WSHFC Communications Director Margret Graham defended the program, which she said is the result of “rigorous research.”
The 2023 state law required that a study of past housing discrimination in the state be carried out.
“An independent national firm studied past housing discrimination in Washington state, how it affected families and its continued impacts today, as well as policies that could ameliorate these impacts,” Graham said in an email.
The program was created to benefit prospective homebuyers “whose families were excluded by policies, in place before the passage of the federal Fair Housing Act in 1968, that barred them from financing and/or buying a home due to their skin color or ethnicity.”
