LAW-2957 Housing Discrimination Law, Theory and Practice: Brainstorming and Implementing Solutions to Discrimination
The importance of safe and affordable housing cannot be overstated. A person’s zip code is an accurate predictor of many outcomes such as: life expectancy, social mobility, and future earnings. Home ownership itself is an American ideal - the house with the picket fence is a major component of "the American Dream," the idea that everyone in this country has the opportunity for success. In reality, the tools needed to achieve this dream were given to some, and purposely withheld from others. This nation was formed and built by killing and forcibly relocating the people who already lived here and by exploiting the labor of people who were forced into slavery. Equality was not achieved when that immoral practice was outlawed. The words in the Declaration of Independence have been willfully ignored from the moment they were written – "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…" The history of housing in America is a tale about systemic racism and hundreds of years of creative ways that the legal system has been used to impose segregation. Dr. King wrote that "corrective legislation requires organization to bring it to life. Laws only declare rights; they do not deliver them. The oppressed must take hold of laws and transform them into effective mandates." The Fair Housing Act (FHA) is one such piece of corrective legislation. The FHA makes it illegal to discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, and national origin in both public and private housing (and many states have added additional protected classes).
This is an online course designed to give an overview of fair housing law and provide practical knowledge necessary to combat housing discrimination. Students in this course will be introduced to fair housing history, law, policy, and procedure, and given the opportunity to draft fair housing complaints that are based on real test evidence. The Housing Discrimination Testing Program (HDTP) works with discrimination testers to gather evidence about the typical business practices of housing providers. Students will not only gain the experience of working with facts to develop a complaint, but will study the law, HUD guidance, agency procedure, and fair housing cases and agency decisions that will help prepare the student for practice in the future.
This class will focus on practical skills such as strategic decision-making, factual investigation, client advocacy, and communication skills through the lens of systemic racism, bias, microaggressions, and other JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion) concepts.