ERC Lends Expertise to Help Baltimore Region Identify and Address Fair Housing Barriers
By Hana Cho and Nick Adjami
March 20, 2025
The Baltimore Metropolitan Council and eleven local jurisdictions and agencies teamed up to investigate barriers to fair housing in the Greater Baltimore Region. The coalition published the draft Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice in the Baltimore Region as a result of those efforts. The draft plan identifies obstacles preventing residents from accessing safe, affordable housing in their neighborhoods of choice, and proposes solutions. To ensure the final plan is robust and responsive to the community’s needs, the Baltimore Metropolitan Council accepted feedback from local residents and organizations on how the plan could improve.
For years, ERC has conducted fair housing advocacy, education, and civil rights testing in the Baltimore region, and so is knowledgeable about the fair housing issues residents face. ERC contributed this expertise to the coalition by co-chairing the Working Group on Fair Housing Enforcement in the Private Market and by submitting a comment on the draft plan.
ERC’s comment commends the coalition for collaborating across jurisdictions and for committing to use fair housing testing to combat systemic barriers to fair housing. ERC’s comment also emphasizes the importance of accessibility testing to more accurately gauge the experiences of residents with disabilities and address the shortage of accessible homes. Finally, ERC encourages participating jurisdictions to set ambitious goals and action steps to rival the profound fair housing barriers identified, and hopes the coalition will incorporate this feedback into the final plan.
ERC’s full comment is available here.
———
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.
The work that provided the basis for this publication was supported by funding under a grant with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The substance and findings of the work are dedicated to the public. The author and publisher are solely responsible for the accuracy of the statements and interpretations contained in this publication. Such interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Government.
