Fair Housing Council of Greater Washington

In 1982, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs filed an amicus brief in Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, a Supreme Court case which established the standing of individual testers and testing organizations to sue under the Fair Housing Act. The following year, an interfaith group of community leaders founded the Fair Housing Council of Greater Washington to further equal housing opportunity through testing and outreach. The Fair Housing Council helped expose housing discrimination and used testing to support individual complainants’ experiences. In 1990, the Fair Housing Council won a significant victory in Spann v. Colonial Village, solidifying the standing of fair housing organizations to bring legal actions in their own name.