American Dreams

Roaches tickled wooden floors that sunk threateningly towards the muddy earth. Mold climbed up fractured walls toward ceilings where stained wet patches took the place of smoke alarms. 

Linda McCray, director of the Bowling Green Human Rights Commission, recalled this scene smoothly, as if describing a fresh nightmare. But McCray drew this memory from waking moments in which she saw the devastating dwellings immigrant families called home.

This case was rare, she said, not because of the fleas feeling their way inside or trees encroaching through broken windows, but because someone reported it.

The Kentucky Commission on Human Rights processed 20 housing discrimination complaints from Bowling Green residents from November of 1999 to January of 2009, according to commission records. Nine of these were filed on the basis of race or national origin.  Experts say this is not because the problem is rare, but because immigrants and refugees rarely file complaints.

“It’s very frustrating to know that these things are occurring and know that if someone doesn’t come forward and report it, nothing will be done about it,” she said. “And, of course, we know it will happen again.”

Discrimination comes in the form of dilapidated buildings as well as plainly prejudiced business practices, McCray said.

She said she has seen houses with extension cords flooding from the sole electrical outlet and bathrooms where residents use a hole in floor carved by the landlord as a makeshift toilet.

Other cases involve unfair leases or land contracts signed by residents who understand little or no English.

Housing experts say immigrants and refugees are particularly vulnerable to discrimination because they fear retaliation. With Bowling Green’s concentrated foreign-born population – 8.3 percent according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau data – unscrupulous landlords have a wide opportunity to hit their mark. 

In addition, about 53 percent of Bowling Green residents rent their housing, according to the Census. Immigrants and refugees likely contribute to this high figure, because one in six renter households in America in 2005 was headed by an immigrant, according to a report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. 

Art Crosby, the executive director of the Lexington Fair Housing Council, a non-profit organization that works with the Human Rights Commission to process complaints, said he hears of more housing discrimination complaints in Bowling Green than any other Kentucky city besides Louisville and Lexington.

Crosby suspected the high rate of complaints was due in part to cultural clashes occurring as the city grows and the foreign-born population increases.

State and national surveys show that most housing discrimination victims don’t file complaints.

The Kentucky Housing Corporation’s 2008 Fair Housing Survey found that 15 percent of Spanish speakers and 25 percent of other non-English speakers said they had been discriminated against while trying to obtain housing in the state.

However, most people said they did not file complaints because they “did not know what good it would do.”

Juan Pena, field supervisor for the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, said that concern applies to many foreign-born residents in Bowling Green.

“They have other major needs: immigration papers, health care, education for their children,” he said.

National figures are similar, according to a 2005 HUD survey conducted by Martin Abravanel, senior research associate for The Urban Institute. The survey found 80 percent of victims with plausible discrimination cases did nothing.

Abravanel said the cost of reporting discrimination could be particularly high for immigrants and refugees who fear complaining will lead to eviction or deportation.

 “If you have a situation where there is a large, new, foreign-born population, a person can discriminate with impunity,” he said. “Landlords don’t think they can get caught, so discrimination can be much higher.”

The faces of discrimination

Bowling Green’s Code Enforcement Division inspectors can fine landlords for structural problems in their tenants’ residences, such as inadequate plumbing systems, water systems and interior structures.  But inspectors can only investigate if someone has made a formal complaint or the violation is visible from roads or walkways outside the building, Code Enforcement Coordinator Alex Colovos said.

He said the immigrant community’s hesitance to approach American authority figures contributes to the division’s inability to punish violating landlords.

“If you have a culture of people that have that fear, then they won’t contact you, and you won’t know about it,” he said. “We cannot go up to the door and demand to come in.”

McCray said some immigrant tenants brave enough to call the division were evicted.

In other cases, landlords craft leases obviously biased against tenants with limited English-speaking abilities, she said.

In a practice Pena said he commonly hears about, landlords charge Hispanic families $450 a person per month for each person living in the unit, whereas other tenants pay $450 total for all residents.

McCray said tenants sign these leases, which they are unable to read, without understanding the unfair terms.

“That looks like discrimination pays,” she said.

Some discriminatory land sellers in Bowling Green have begun drafting land sales contracts that exploit non-English speakers, McCray said.

The contracts lure buyers in by promising no down payments, she said. However, buried in legal jargon, several clauses state that if buyers are even a day late on their monthly payments, the house and all the improvements  revert to the seller again, she said.

These conditions make it largely impossible for buyers to own their homes, McCray said.

“They want so badly to have a house and a backyard where their kids can play just like everyone else,” she said. “These people, they lose everything.”

McCray said buyers report about four contacts like these a year, and she believes there are many more buyers with similar contracts. She could not release any victims’ names due to confidentiality requirements.

Stories of landlords threatening to have tenants deported if they complain to authorities circulate around the city, said George Mendoza Jr., director of Bowling Green Habitat for Humanity, an organization that builds and renovates homes for needy families. This only encourages immigrants and refugees to fear people with the power to help them, he said.

Mendoza said despite Habitat’s attempts to encourage the Hispanic community to apply for its subsidized homes, only one of the 50 homes built since the organization began belongs to a Hispanic family.

Renter’s Retreat 

Some landlords have exploited Bowling Green’s new population of renters, but others have embraced the city’s diverse population and taken in active role in helping their refugee and immigrant tenants.

Khamid Eybov, 25, a Turkish refugee, said he met such a landlord when he moved into Creekwood Apartments several years ago. The Bowling Green International Center settled he and his family in the complex on Creekwood Avenue off Russellville Road.

They are not alone in the complex, where 73 percent of the tenants are immigrants and refugees, owner Jack McCoy said.

Eybov and his wife, Zukhra Karimova, 20, also a refugee, pay their rent by doing odd jobs around the complex. Currently, the couple is painting a vacant apartment, and Eybov, who lost his job at Emerson Electric, salted the parking lots and walkways in the winter, Karimova said.

“He’s a good person,” she said of McCoy. “He doesn’t say ‘no.’”

McCoy said he has also helped the couple fill out job applications and forms for government aid.

“There’s no way I’m going to rip them off,” McCoy said about his tenants, who come from countries including Bosnia, Burundi, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Ghana and Nigeria. “They’re already struggling.”

In April, McCoy attended a city commission meeting to ask for grant money to help people weatherize their homes and rental properties. He said his tenants often can’t afford rising utility costs.

“Even though I’m their landlord, my heart goes out to them,” he said. “They’re more than tenants to me. They’re people.”

McCoy hasn’t heard much about discriminatory landlords in the city, but he said exploiting immigrants and refugees is a despicable practice.

International Center Director James Robinson agrees, which is why International Center officials are considering purchasing their own apartment complex to house refugees when they arrive. Robinson said he is currently working on obtaining a loan for the project. Any money made on rent would help fund the International Center, he said.

“I looked around and thought, ‘[Some landlords] are making a killing off the backs of refugees,’” he said. “Why not have the money refugees spend go to refugees?”