59 Temple Place, Suite 1105 Boston, Massachusetts 02111
Before the Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston was founded in 1998, Boston was the only major metropolitan city in the country without an independent fair housing organization. The Center now serves the greater Boston area with a comprehensive program of fair housing technical assistance, public outreach and educational services, and enforcement action, seeking regional solutions to metropolitan-wide problems. Because fair housing is by definition a regional concern, it must be addressed through programs that are metropolitan in design and scope. No regional strategy can succeed, however, without harnessing the resources of individual communities -- residents, community organizations, government agencies, municipal fair housing entities, and other non-profit agencies. The Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston emphasizes collaboration and coordination with local individuals, organizations and public entities throughout the region confronting fair housing issues.
Program Highlights
The Center is working to create linkages among community-based organizations and activists, nurturing leaders to advocate for fair housing and ensure that voices of goodwill are heard when community tensions arise. This work focuses on three areas:
Boston neighborhoods experiencing tensions surrounding public housing
The contiguous cities in Boston's near suburbs
And a network of suburban communities north of Boston.
In the months to come, the Fair Housing Center will focus in particular on the following:
Fostering goodwill among young people, who tend to be most likely to commit hate crimes.
Expanding awareness of housing rights among disabled persons who live in group homes.
The Fair Housing Center also will work with Access Living in Chicago to further this goal.
As they move forward, the staff of the Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston will continue to operate by the guiding principles that enabled them to further the CommUNITY 2000 mission of fostering harmony, respect and understanding among neighbors. They will listen, they will learn, they will make a difference.
Menu of Strategies
CommUNITY 2000 strategies have been specifically crafted to provide individuals and organizations with a variety of options adaptable to their particular circumstances.
Below are some of the ways CommUNITY 2000 has worked to reduce, respond to, and reconcile community tensions.
This Menu of Strategies can serve as both a resource and a guide for anyone looking for ways to create more harmonious neighborhoods.
Increasing Tenant Involvement in South Boston's Public Housing
Providing Resources to Minority Tenant Activists One of the first areas in which the FHCGB made inroads was South Boston, which had been a segregated, predominantly white area of the city with a history of resisting desegregation. FHCGB executive director David Harris attended police task force meetings for Boston Public Housing residents, where he met Lea Rios, a tenant organizer from the Old Colony Project. Harris served as a resource for Rios in her efforts to reorganize Old Colony's Tenant Task Force to include legitimate minority representation. Harris believes he was able provide Rios with substantive resources because he spent months on a "listening tour" before offering support. This strategy was in keeping with the FHCGB's "ground-up approach". As a new organization, the FHCGB believed the best way to help was to learn first.
Enhancing the work of FANS Ginny Hamilton-Ashe of the FHCGB made a connection with FANS (Families Advocating Neighborhood Strength), a South Boston community coalition working to address the needs of low-income families. By reaching out to FANS and becoming affiliated with it, Hamilton-Ashe is able to keep the group focused on fair housing and race issues.
Fair Housing for Boston's Seaport Redevelopment
Boston's redevelopment of the property bordering its seaport, much of it in South Boston, was a unique opportunity to create a new and inclusive neighborhood for the city. Unfortunately, that ideal was in jeopardy beginning in 1998 because the Boston Redevelopment Authority entered into a "Memorandum of Understanding," with South Boston's white power structure. This dubious legal document gave South Boston's power brokers considerable control over redevelopment funds.
The FHCGB was one of seven organizations that filed suit against the city, alleging the "Memorandum" discriminated. The suit forced the city to scrap the "Memorandum," and enter into an agreement creating legitimate open and affordable housing for the seaport.
In this situation, FHCGB joined with others to share the cost and liability of taking legal action against a powerful government body - and winning. It was a fair housing victory that would have been difficult to achieve alone. The FHCGB also took the lead to bring together various neighborhood and community groups to challenge the city's power structure.
Active Participation in the Greater Boston Civil Rights Coalition
On behalf of the FHCGB, David Harris is co-chair of the Coalition, a network of civil rights groups that meets regularly to exchange ideas and provide support for individual objectives and common goals.
Through active involvement with a region-wide coalition of civil rights groups, Harris has both enhanced the FHCGB's work and brought a housing focus to the range of Greater Boston's civil rights issues. This strategy of forming and/or working with coalitions whenever possible empowers all organizations involved, many of which are underfunded and understaffed.
"We Don't Want Your Kind Living Here"
On April 24, 2001, the FHCGB released "We Don't Want Your Kind Living Here," a 30-page report on discrimination in the Greater Boston rental market. The Center conducted extensive in-person and telephone testing in four Boston neighborhoods and 12 communities bordering the city. Results revealed that more than 50 percent of testers were discriminated against.
The FHCGB produced concrete proof that discrimination in Greater Boston's rental market was widespread. The report was thorough, extensive, and professionally conducted. It was a factual indictment, and therefore generated wide media coverage.
Fighting Discriminatory Rental Advertisements
The FHCGB negotiated a court settlement in early July, 2001, with the Boston Globe, which had been illegally publishing discriminatory rental advertisements. The landlords who placed the ads were overtly or covertly discouraging applicants with children or federal subsidies from renting, a practice that is illegal. The federally-enforceable agreement which was put into place as a result of the FHCG's legal action requires training, education, and policy changes at the Globe.
The FHCGB was a fledgling fair housing center operating in a metropolitan area where the powers-that-be were either dismissive or ignorant of federal fair housing laws. While the primary focus of CommUNITY 2000 was on changing community attitudes rather than enforcement, the FHCGB needed to do both. As the seaport and Boston Globe lawsuits illustrate, the FHCGB put Greater Boston on notice: We're here and we're watching.
