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50 Years After Federal Intervention, Pennsylvania Is Still An Epicenter For Housing Discrimination

Charles Rex Arbogast
/
AP
Hamdi Mohamed, from Libya, waits to take the oath of citizenship from U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis in the Northern District of Illinois during a naturalization ceremony Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2017, in Chicago.

Lawmakers passed theFair Housing Act just one week after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. as riots flared in Pittsburgh and other cities. It was intended to protect buyers and renters from discrimination based on race, color, disability, religion, sex, familial status or national origin, but advocates argue the nation is still failing renters and homebuyers with disabilities and children, as well as those of color.

Kate Giammerise of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette joins 90.5 WESA's Virginia Alvino Young to talk about the landmark law, what can be gleaned from eviction data, and how some Pittsburghers want to pave the way for systemic change.

Coming up...

A billboard in East Liberty featuring Afrofuturist art sparked accusations of racism and censorship last week when the landlord of the building ordered it be taken down. 90.5 WESA's Bill O'Driscoll explains the latest on The Last Billboard project, and gives his picks on works worth seeing among other artists of color.

Later in the program...

Pittsburgh’s international population continues to slowly rise, but will that be affected or reflected on a new U.S. Census which could also include a controversial, Trump-backed question about citizenship. Washington Post demography writer Tara Bahrampour and the Post-Gazette's Gary Rotstein explain what's at stake.

And finally...

Three candidates are on the Republican primary ballot May 15 to try to unseat Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, and two are multi-millionaires whose campaigns have each spent $1.9 million on harshly critical media buys in the first three months of 2018. 

Brad Bumsted, bureau chief for LNP Media's print-only newspaper The Caucus, joins WESA's politics editor Chris Potter.

The Confluence, where the news comes together, is 90.5 WESA’s weekly news program. Each week, reporters, editors and storytellers join veteran journalist and host Kevin Gavin to take an in-depth look at stories important to the Pittsburgh region. Find more episodes of The Confluence here.

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