The United States Government took another step January 22, 2008 into forcing English-speaking citizens to accommodate the rising tide of Spanish-speaking immigrants and illegal aliens. The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced on their web site that they have forced a California landlord to “…provide oral interpretation services, [and] display and maintain fair housing posters in English and Spanish…” This on top of a $10,344 fine awarded to a family that did not want to pay a rent increase.

The allegations raised against the manager were dubious, at best, since they showed a lack of professional behavior versus actual discrimination under the Fair Housing Act. HUD did not indicate that this was a pattern of behavior by Ms. Meeks or her employer, only that she aimed her vitriol at a specific tenant. However, what landlord in their right mind, without a pocketbook billions of dollars deep, would dare take on HUD?

To quote: “HUD's investigation found that [Hollie] Meeks, an employee of Ontario Townhouse Limited Partnership and Edgewood Management Corporation, overcharged rent, refused to do repairs, and yelled at Hispanic residents because they did not speak English. Upon receiving a notice of rent increase, one family requested help from Meeks, but she demanded more documents, harassed, yelled and threatened them with eviction.”

Meeks was fired as part of the settlement. Any business owner worth their salt would fire an employee once they became aware that an employee was yelling at customers, harassing them, or threatening them. And what were the documents that HUD claims Meeks was demanding? Is this a subsidized housing project? If so, demanding more documents would be the norm if a tenant failed to produce them, and telling them they would be evicted if they failed to do so normal business practice. “Threatening” is not the same as “promising.”

However, the real point is: Was this action truly under the purview of the Fair Housing Act?

Nowhere within the Act does it protect someone from being discriminated against because of their language – only from discrimination based on their race or nation of origin. Nowhere in the Act does it give the government the authority to force a landlord to provide translation services. Nowhere in the Act does it say this is a bilingual society and that all signs must be in both English and Spanish.

And who authorized HUD to spend the money to make their web site bilingual? Did Congress give them the authorization to annually spend the millions of dollars necessary to maintain a United State property in two languages? Or did HUD use its discretionary authority as part of the Executive branch of government to do so?