David Price: “I strongly oppose this amendment. The Private Enforcement Initiative provides grants to nonprofit organizations to…”

“I strongly oppose this amendment. The Private Enforcement Initiative provides grants to nonprofit organizations to prevent and eliminate discriminatory housing practices. These organizations receive complaints. They investigate them. They work to educate landlords and property managers on their responsibilities under Federal fair housing law. Their work ensures that legitimate complaints move forward and that education is provided to housing providers when that is appropriate. Across the country, PEI grantees are working to ensure that families with children have access to housing. Just this May, HUD and Project Sentinel, an organization in California, announced a conciliation agreement with a landlord who refused to rent to people with small children and infants. Another PEI grantee in California worked to ensure that a person with disabilities had access to a medically required service animal. Another grantee in Illinois worked to ensure that a mortgage lender did not discriminate on the basis of race. This is the kind of work that PEIs do. It may seem expedient to some to transfer the funding and responsibility of investigating fair housing complaints to States and local units of government, but we would lose a lot by doing that. What we would lose is the organizational knowledge, the years of expertise that the PEI program has developed.…”