ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 28, 1996 TAG: 9601260115
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALBERT C. EISENBERG
MY SOCIOLOGY professor at the University of Richmond used to joke that traveling from Williamsburg to Richmond was like leaving the 18th century and entering the 19th. He was wrong. The Puritans are alive and well in Richmond, as the governor and his appointees to the Virginia Housing Development Authority seek to stamp a scarlet letter on the mortgage-loan applications of unrelated households who want to buy a home.
Through his appointments, the governor has remade the VHDA Board of Commissioners in his own image. He has now used it as his instrument to strike down the board's termination in June 1994 of a discriminatory regulation that had been on the books for some time.
That regulation had barred mortgage loans for ``families'' not related by blood, marriage or adoption. As a result, it promoted official discrimination against such households as two friends, two widowed sisters-in-law, two second cousins, engaged couples and others seeking access to the agency's low-cost mortgages.
The governor believes that a state-chartered agency should define what constitutes a ``family" and police people's living arrangements through mortgage-lending restrictions. He is wrong.
For one thing, the policy violates the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which bars discrimination in mortgage lending on the basis of marital status.
His policy also places VHDA outside national mortgage banking and lending practice, and at odds with federal lending programs, such as VA and FHA, that do not discriminate on the basis of familial or martial status.
The policy is also totally inconsistent with Virginia law protecting the right to own property and to incur debt.
The governor specifically seeks to discourage gay and unmarried relationships, but his policy for doing it has enormous internal conflicts. For example, it allows exemptions for the elderly and the disabled, leading to the inescapable conclusion that either the governor believes that these groups never are gay or never have unmarried relationships or that, in their case, it doesn't matter.
There is another anomaly. The restriction covers only mortgage lending for home ownership. It does not prevent two unrelated people from co-signing a lease to live in a VHDA-financed rental apartment. So, we must also conclude that the governor considers unrelated home-buyers morally deficient, but not unrelated renters. Of course, the restriction also smites those who are not gay and not engaged in any emotional relationship of any kind but just want to own property together.
Virginia has struggled hard to leave behind its old painful history of racial discrimination. The governor and his allies have opened a door to another of society's dark corners where prejudice, fear and ignorance lurk.
The policy divides Virginians according to their household status. It hurts people who have done nothing wrong by branding them as unworthy of borrowing money solely because of their household status. It is rank discrimination that will undermine our reputation nationwide and chill our ability to recruit business and new residents.
Albert C. Eisenberg of Arlingon is a commissioner of the Virginia Housing Development Authority.
LENGTH: Medium: 63 linesby CNB