Iowa Civil Rights Commission

A Self-Assessment of Iowa Civil Rights Commission Effectiveness in Promoting Community Living for Persons with Disabilities

I. Introduction

A. Civil Rights Commission Organization - ICRC organization - As an enforcement agency, the Iowa Civil Rights Commission is responsible for the state laws relevant to promoting the rights of individuals with disabilities [among the other characteristics protected by the Act] in the areas of employment, housing, and access to public accommodations. Ancillary to the enforcement staff, the agency has an educational program which educates the public about the requirements of the laws provides technical assistance to employers, business owners and landlords to enable their voluntary compliance with the laws. See attached Table of Organization.

• State level—The Iowa Civil Rights Commission is responsible for the state laws relevant to promoting the rights of individuals with disabilities in the areas of employment, housing, and access to public accommodations. The great majority of staff personnel are devoted to the enforcement functions of intake, investigation, mediation and finally determination of the merits of complaints alleging unfair or discriminatory practices. Ancillary to the enforcement staff, the agency has an educational program in which agency staff conduct training to the public about the requirements of the law and provides technical assistance to employers, business owners and landlords to enable them to comply with the laws voluntarily.

• State level - The regular and routine service of the Civil Rights Commission is to enforce civil rights laws, including those that prohibit discrimination against persons with disabilities in the areas of employment, housing, and access to places of public accommodation. The Civil Rights Act has some prohibitions in the areas of education and credit that protect persons with disabilities from discrimination but these are more narrowly drafted.
  
  
• The enforcement service advances community living for persons with disabilities because discrimination in employment can prevent persons with disabilities from achieving economic self-sufficiency, discrimination in public accommodations can exclude or segregate persons with disabilities from access to civic life, and discrimination and the failure to accommodate denies housing to persons with disabilities.
  
  
• With the force of the law and the authority ultimately to enjoin activities that violate that law and to seek full relief for the citizens victimized by discrimination, the Commission’s mediation program has also been successful. Mediation is an informal process in which the Commission’s neutral mediator assists opposing parties to reach a voluntary, negotiated resolution of their dispute and, in this context, a charge of discrimination. Mediation gives the parties the opportunity to discuss their issues, to determine the underlying interests or concerns and to find areas of agreement.
  
  
• The Commission’s education service bolsters the enforcement efforts by informing the public of their rights under the Civil Rights Act and by instructing employers, businesses, landlords and property managers as to how to conform their policies and practices with the state civil rights laws.

• The Civil Rights Commission’s regular and routine services, described above, promote and support community living.
  
  
• Additionally, the Civil Rights Commission has worked diligently to improve the availability of accessible housing through several specific Task Forces and in the performance of specific grant-related activities.
• The Civil Rights Act defines discrimination in housing against persons with disabilities to include, among other things, a failure “to design and construct” certain new multi-family dwellings so they are accessible to or adaptable for use by persons with disabilities.
  
  
• The Civil Rights Commission has partnered with other agencies and professional associations to seek reform of the state building code—the Accessibility Code Summit. This task force, chaired by Pat Steele and Jim DeJong of the ADA Project, completed its work in January 2001 and made five recommendations:
  1. As soon as feasible, the State of Iowa should replace Chapter 16 and Chapter 18 of the Iowa Administrative Code with the “Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines as the new state accessibility code. The most current version of ADAAG, including appropriate reference to the federal Fair Housing Act Guidelines, should be adopted in the form of administrative rules as the single, comprehensive, accessibility code for the State of Iowa;
     
     
  2. The State of Iowa should seek certification of Iowa’s new accessibility code by the federal Department of Justice;
     
     
  3. The State of Iowa should provide accessibility code training and education for architects, designers, plan reviewers, building inspectors, owners and others involved in planning, designing, constructing, altering, and managing buildings and sites;
     
     
  4. The State of Iowa should improve and expand its accessibility code review procedures; and
     
     
  5. The State of Iowa should provide a centralized source for information, interpretation, and technical assistance regarding State of Iowa accessibility code requirements.
     
     
• In 1999, with the aid of a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Civil Rights Commission produced a brochure entitled “Accessible Multi-family Housing in Iowa—What the Law Requires”. This was a guide for owners, developers, architects, engineers and builders for building professionals to inform them of the laws that govern new construction and remodeling—including the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Fair Housing Act—and the consequences for failure to comply with those laws. This brochure was distributed to the professional associations of the professions listed and has also been available on the web site for InfoTech at www.uiowa.edu/infotech/housingaccess.htm. The introductory page to this brochure led with “You need to read this if you own, design, build, or develop multi-family housing.” It proceeded to state that “Reading this can help you avoid: legal expenses, costly retrofitting and structural changes, civil penalties, actual and compensatory damages.”
  
  
• The Civil Rights Commission has obtained a further grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and is in the midst of activities to be used for outreach and education of housing consumers who are persons with disabilities. One component of the grant specifically focuses outreach to senior citizens who happen to be disabled. The purpose of this grant is to counter the lack of awareness among persons with disabilities of their rights under the law [with a by-product of enlisting them to counter the widespread disregard of the law by the construction industry]. The grant will allow the production and publication of a Consumer’s Guide to Fair Housing. Ten thousand copies of this brochure will be produced and distributed and the agency will develop and conduct 20 workshops in 10 communities to teach the material outlined in the brochure. These workshops are being coordinated with the local disability committees, independent living centers, and local human rights commissions. An additional 25 workshops will be conducted at senior meal sites around the state to inform disabled senior citizens of their fair housing rights. The first of these workshops is scheduled for June 2, 2003.

A. Identification and review by each Department/division of Olmstead-related policies, programs, statutes and regulations.

The Civil Rights Commission’s service is to enforce the Civil Rights Act, and engages in enforcement activities and educational activities to support achieving voluntary compliance with those laws. It performs its enforcement functions in response to complaints of discrimination filed with the agency. As the law which the agency enforces includes prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of disability, the regular and routine work of the agency advances the goal of having individuals with disabilities living in the most integrated community settings.

1. B. The Civil Rights Commission’s self-assessment involved the following steps:
   1. Reviewing the Olmstead reports of the departments of the federal government which have the same role and function as the Civil Rights Commission—the plans submitted by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and the US Department of Justice-Civil Rights Division. These reports identified the overarching barrier to community living as the lack of accessible, affordable housing, and the particular barriers were the widespread non-compliance with the new construction requirements, widespread misunderstanding of the legal obligations related to housing modification, and continued community opposition to group homes.
      
      
   2. Review of the Iowa Plan for Community Development. This report called for aggressive enforcement of the ADA accessibility standards and the Fair Housing Law and a requirement that building codes comply with the ADA accessibility standards and guidelines.
      
      
   3. Review of the study conducted by the Civil Rights Commission in 1998, entitled “Accessibility Review of Covered Multifamily Housing”. Part of that study involved the on-site review of thirty-two properties located in six Iowa communities in the summer of 1998. All properties were constructed after January 1, 1992 [the applicable date for the Iowa Civil Rights Act’s design and construction requirements for new construction] and all surveys showed some violation of the design and construction requirements. The study also showed that only about 11% of the multi-family housing constructed in Iowa between January 1992 and January 16, 1998 received a handicapped review certificate. The study demonstrated that the existing system for obtaining accessibility reviews is often circumvented, that multifamily housing is being constructed without complying with the accessibility guidelines of the Iowa Civil Rights Act [and thus, perforce, of the Fair Housing Act], and that even buildings which have obtained a handicapped review certificate may not be in compliance with the civil rights acts.

III. Strategic Action Plan Development Process

A. Because the Civil Rights Commission is an agency with the same mission as various federal enforcement agencies and those agencies are able to devote resources to devise methods to overcome barriers to effective enforcement of the civil rights laws, the Civil Rights Commission is able to place substantial reliance on the work that they have already done. The critical learning from the work of both the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division [which enforces Titles II and III of the ADA] and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development [which enforces the Fair Housing Act] is that the requirements for accessible design and construction that both acts require is best done by incorporating the civil rights requirements into the building codes and permitting building officials who are involved in plan approval and construction inspection processes to be part of the enforcement effort simply by enforcing their building code standards. Should a mistake occur in the design or initial construction phase of a project, the mistake can be identified early through the plan approval and inspection processes and corrected at a time when adjustments can easily be made and the costs for doing so remain low. Finally, jurisdictions that provide accessibility “check points” such as those described above through the implementation of a certified code provide a significant benefit to private industry and an incentive for growth and development.

The Accessibility Code Summit which produced specific recommendations for building code reform in January 2001, included individuals representing a diverse group of points of view---architects, building code officials, the State Fire Marshal’s office, Civil Rights, disability and elder advocacy organizations, the building code advisory council, the Iowa League of Cities and the Iowa State Association of Counties.

Other identified barriers were non-compliance with the law, which persists because of the lack of enforcement of the provisions of the civil rights laws. The provisions are not enforced, in turn, because complaints are not filed with the Civil Rights Commission, nor is the Civil Rights Commission otherwise alerted to the apparent violations of the law. The proposed solution is to have consumers and advocates across the state well-educated on the requirements of the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act such that they can aid the Commission in this respect by identifying any violations in their communities. Consumers can be informed as to how they can be instrumental obtaining enforcement by the Civil Rights Commission even if they do not want to file an individual complaint. The solution entails building the network of consumers, advocacy agencies, legal aid office staff, local human rights agencies, and others and developing and delivering the training and maintaining that network.

B. Specify timelines for plan development process.

1. Building Code Barrier

a. Short term [6 months to 1 year]

The Accessibility Code Summit group, or one similar in makeup, including representatives from the Iowa Olmstead Real Choices Consumer Task Force could reconvene with the task of ascertaining the apparent obstacles to accomplishing this reform, developing strategies to overcome the obstacles.

b. Long term [1-3 years]

Form a working group to develop the framework for a mandatory procedure whereby all covered multifamily dwellings [actually, any building covered by the building code] must receive approval in a review under a code certified as “safe harbor” for the Fair Housing Act or certified by the Department of Justice as meeting or exceeding the ADA Accessibility Guidelines, and this approval is received prior to the initiation of construction.

2. Information/Absence of Complaints About Violations Barrier

a. Long term [1-3 years]

Convene a statewide conference by extending invitations to individuals with disabilities, Centers for Independent Living, Commission for Persons with Disabilities and their citizens’ committees, other advocacy organizations and groups, legal services offices, and others from across the state to establish a framework of informed and educated individuals across the state who could notify the Civil Rights Commission of apparent violations of the Civil Rights Act or the Fair Housing Act. The conference would outline the scope of the project, establish a format and framework for an ongoing referral network, and design and plan for delivery of educational services and information to the consumers and advocates.