The Fair Housing Center is a major force for equal housing opportunity in the greater Boston area.       Here are some of our accomplishments:

On Wednesday, May 21, 2008 the FHCGB celbrated our 10^th Anniversary, also commemorating 40 years of the Federal Fair Housing Act.  The event was a special opportunity to highlight the progress we’ve made in the 40 years since the Fair Housing Act became law, along with the very real challenges still before us to address discrimination and segregation.  We were honored to have Governor Patrick, himself a Charter Member of the Fair Housing Center, address the crowd of more than 125 housing and civil rights advocates, community activists, business leaders, and government officials. Governor Patrick used this opportunity to announce his appointment of Ron Marlow to the newly created position of Assistant Secretary of Access and Opportunity.  Having advocated for its creation since the Governor was elected, we are pleased with this appointment and will work with this effort to ensure that state policies advance civil rights and housing choice.

For two years, the Fair Housing Center led efforts to promote legislation to require the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) to collect and distribute race and family size data on occupants of state assisted housing.  Without such data we cannot know which programs are addressing the racial and economic segregation of the Commonwealth and deserve additional resources or which programs are failing and might be due for modifications.  Both the House and Senate enacted the Data Collection legislation in mid-October and Gov. Romney signed the bill into law on Oct. 26, 2006.  

In 2007, FHCGB Executive Director testified twice before the House Financial Services Committee regarding our use of testing to uncover discrimination in mortgage lending: first before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations at a hearing entitled “Rooting Out Discrimination in Mortgage Lending: Using HMDA as a Tool for Fair Housing Enforcement” on Wednesday, July 25^th, 2007 in Washington DC and again on  Monday, October 15^th, 2007, at a Field Hearing on racial disparities in Mortgage Lending at Roxbury Community College. Click here for the complete written testimony.

Over the past four years, the Fair Housing Center has fielded more than 700 calls for assistance, 250 of which were potential discrimination cases.  Increased training and outreach has doubled the current percentage of calls that are fair housing to over 40%. 

Since 2003, Fair Housing Center staff have helped more than 160 people who have experienced discrimination to file a complaint and/or otherwise resolve a fair housing dispute. In the past year alone, case outcomes have included financial settlements for families who were denied housing, training mandates for landlords and realtors found in violation of the law, and maintaining housing for individuals facing wrongful evictions.  

In four years, the Fair Housing Center has trained 118 real estate professionals about their rights and responsibilities under fair housing laws as well as how to constructively educate owners unaware of their legal obligations. 

In 1999, led by the Fair Housing Center, seven organizations brought a successful legal challenge regarding the distribution of community benefits derived from the development of the Boston Seaport District, ensuring that these benefits would be distributed in a non-discriminatory manner.

In the early 2000s, the Fair Housing Center and partnering attorneys worked with the Boston Globe, the Herald Media Group, the Boston Metro, and the Independent Newspaper Group to strengthen their policies and procedures regarding non-discrimination in real estate advertising, including training for employees of the publishers and funding for the Fair Housing Center to conduct public education on fair housing.

The Fair Housing Center received the 2002 Equal Justice Award for contributions to racial equality and justice from the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law of the Boston Bar Association.