Celebrate Fair Housing Month with the Equal Rights Center
April 8, 2021
The ERC is thrilled to offer four Fair Housing Month events, presented in collaboration with partners across the Greater Washington, DC region. Fair Housing Month celebrates the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, a major victory of the Civil Rights Movement. This year marks the 53rd anniversary of the Act’s passage. All events will be hosted virtually and are free to attend. More information about the events and links to register can be found below the flyer.
April 22nd at 2 PM — Know Your Rights: Fair Housing for People with Disabilities
This event, hosted by the DC Public Library, aims to empower attendees to be able to identify and respond to disability discrimination in housing, should they encounter it. We’ll discuss federal and local legal protections, reasonable accommodation and modification requests, and service and assistance animals. To request a reasonable accommodation, email DCPLaccess@dc.gov or call 202-727-2142 at least seven days prior to the event. Register here.
April 27th at 10 AM — Fair Housing: Moving Forward in the Age of the Pandemic: Legal Challenges, New Guidance and Emerging Issues
This virtual training session will include information on fair housing issues that have emerged in relation to COVID-19, new and proposed guidance on source of income protections, and developments concerning sexual orientation and gender identity protections, and will be followed by a Q&A. A brief overview of the importance of the area’s Regional Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing (RAI), the process involved and the opportunity for community involvement will also be provided. Captioning will be provided. For additional reasonable accommodation requests, please contact communications@equalrightscenter.org by April 13th. Register here.
Sponsored by the Equal Rights Center, Fairfax County Office of Human Rights and Equity Programs, Legal Services of Northern Virginia, and Northern Virginia Association of Realtors®.
April 28th at 10 AM — Maryland Fair Housing Roundtable
This webinar-style forum will bring stakeholders together to engage in meaningful dialogue regarding the state of fair housing in Maryland. Panelists from a wide variety of public, private, and non-profit entities specializing in fair housing enforcement, legal representation, advocacy, landlord/tenant affairs, government, property management, and community relations will convene to provide insight on issues that impact the work of all sectors, engage in candid conversations about challenges, and develop strategies for working collectively to promote inclusion and equality. Register here.
Sponsored by the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights.
April 29th at 12 PM — Fair Housing Beyond Borders in the DMV: Why a Regional Approach to Housing Equity Makes Sense
Professor and historian G. Derek Musgrove will give a keynote talk about the history of exclusionary housing policies in the region. Musgrove is the author of Rumor, Repression, and Racial Politics: How the Harassment of Black Elected Officials Shaped Post-Civil Rights America, co-author author of Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital and creator of “Black Power in Washington, D.C.” a web-based map of Black Power activism in the nation’s capital between 1961 and 1998. Following the keynote, stakeholders in the region will address the government’s role in combatting systemic inequality in housing, and the importance of using a regional approach to do so. Captioning and Spanish interpretation will be provided. For additional reasonable accommodation requests, please contact communications@equalrightscenter.org by April 15th. Register here.
Sponsored by the Equal Rights Center, with support from the DC Department of Housing & Community Development and Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.
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The Equal Rights Center (ERC) — a national non-profit organization — 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.
