Events that Empower: Highlights from Fair Housing Month 2024

By: Nick Adjami
May 9, 2024

Thank you for helping us to make Fair Housing Month such a success this year! We were thrilled to have your company at the many events we offered, from in-person conferences to educational webinars and more.

Thank you especially to those who attended the ERC’s annual meeting. The event, Unlocking Full Potential: Incentivizing Better Outcomes in the Housing Voucher Program, brought our community together to celebrate the ERC’s recent successes identifying and eliminating discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations.

ERC Board of Directors President Robert Dinerstein delivers opening remarks at the event.

Those achievements would not be possible without the support of our members and partners. At the event, we presented our Partner in Progress and Impact for Equality awards to law firm Paul Hastings and consulting firm Bates White, respectively. The ERC’s collaborations with each firm proved instrumental to our 2023 successes and advanced our mission. We also honored our 2024 Advocate for Change, Ms. Adams, a D.C. resident who bravely reported source of income discrimination to us to ensure other voucher holders wouldn’t have to face the same unfair treatment she did.

ERC Executive Director Kate Scott presents awards to Michael Spafford of Paul Hastings LLP and Julian Chan and Catherine Tang of Bates White LLC.

Finally, we heard from Dr. Eva Rosen, a Georgetown professor and author whose research examines how landlords interact with the Housing Choice Voucher Program. She discussed findings from her first book, The Voucher Promise, and subsequent research, and offered potential policy solutions to improve outcomes for voucher holders. Watch her remarks in full below!

In addition to our annual meeting, the ERC hosted or participated in ten events in April:

• Fair Housing Fridays: Co-hosted with the D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development, this series of four webinars educated attendees about important fair housing topics and emerging trends, including source of income protections and affirmative fair housing marketing. 
• Maryland Fair Housing Forum: ERC staff provided fair housing resources to attendees and spoke on a panel about source of income discrimination at this event organized by the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights. 
• Pets and Housing Summit: At this event hosted by the Animal Welfare League of Arlington, ERC staff spoke about assistance animals in housing and the rights of people with disabilities. 
• Arlington Fair Housing Conference: The ERC partnered with NAACP Arlington and HOME of Virginia to spread fair housing awareness among local officials, advocates, and community members. Representatives from advocacy organizations and government agencies spoke, including ERC staff who participated on a panel about fair housing trends in Virginia. 
• NAACP Fairfax County Event: ERC staff presented virtually to the NAACP Fairfax County Branch about fair housing and the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule. 
• Fairfax County Fair Housing Month Event: The ERC, Fairfax County Office of Human Rights and Equity Programs, and Northern Virginia Association of Realtors collaborated to educate the community about Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) and share resources. 
• Live in Arlington Information Fair: Centro de Apoyo Familiar (Center for Assistance to Families) and the Arlington County Housing Division partnered to host a day of resource-sharing and workshops related to housing. ERC staff tabled at the event to educate attendees about their fair housing rights. 

ERC Senior Fair Housing Rights Program Manager Susie McClannahan presents to attendees at the 3rd Annual Arlington Fair Housing Conference.

We also published our 2023 Annual Report last month, documenting the progress we made last year toward our goal of eliminating discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations in the Greater Washington, D.C. region and nationwide. The interactive report highlights everything we accomplished together, from civil rights testing investigations to local fair housing advocacy and more. Take a look to catch up on this important work and see how members like you help advance our mission.

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The ERC is a civil rights organization that identifies and seeks to eliminate unlawful and unfair discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations in its home community of Greater Washington DC and nationwide. The ERC’s core strategy for identifying unlawful and unfair discrimination is civil rights testing. When the ERC identifies discrimination, it seeks to eliminate it through the use of testing data to educate the public and business community, support policy advocacy, conduct compliance testing and training, and, if necessary, take enforcement action. For more information, please visit www.equalrightscenter.org