The Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston was founded in 1998 by local housing and civil rights professionals and works to eliminate housing discrimination and promote open communities throughout the region.
Service Area and Target Population
We serve the communities of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Middlesex, and Plymouth counties and seeks to promote fair housing for all protected classes under federal, state, and local laws.Our current programs target discrimination based on race and national origin, family status (the presence of minor children), and source of income (particularly use of Section 8 housing subsidies), We focus on these groups because of the prevalence of discrimination against them, as well as the lack of focused resources for their defense.We partner with urban community organizations serving home seekers, suburban community organizations promoting diversity within their communities, and attorneys experienced in civil rights litigation.
Why the Fair Housing Center is needed
Discrimination in housing not only takes away our freedom to choose where we live, it also limits the variety of people with whom we can interact and the opportunities available to us in our own neighborhoods.Where we live often determines the quality of our children's education and our access to jobs.The Greater Boston region remains one of the nation's most segregated housing markets for African Americans and Latinos.
The Fair Housing Center has conducted two audits of the greater Boston rental housing market in which we arranged for paired testers to respond to apartment listings.The findings show how African Americans, Latinos, families with children, and people with rental subsidies experienced discrimination in one half to two thirds of their attempts to secure rental housing. We published the results of this work in two reports:We Don't Want Your Kind Living Here (2001) and Acceso Negado/Access Denied (2002).
Preliminary testing for racial discrimination in home sales are in a word, sobering.In all 17 cases we found examples of differential treatment.Not all cases involved treatment that would necessarily rise to the level of sustaining a formal complaint.But even "minor" abuses or "trivial misdeeds" can have serious consequences in a housing market such as ours.Overall, the differences in treatment served to advantage white testers over testers of color.
The Fair Housing Center's discrimination testing audits have documented that racial discrimination is the norm rather than the exception for people of color attempting to rent or purchase homes in our region.
Please support the Fair Housing Center
By working to eliminate housing discrimination and promote open communities throughout the region, we aim to allow all our region's residents the opportunity to benefit from and contribute to healthy and vital civic life. These efforts are possible because of the financial support of concerned individuals like you.Please support our work with a donation of an amount that is significant to you.Your contribution will allow the Fair Housing Center to pursue research, policies, and litigation to address systemic housing discrimination while also serving the needs of individuals and families who have experienced discrimination directly.
Please join us as we work to eliminate housing discrimination and promote open communities in our region.We look forward to hearing from you!
Financial Information
You can request an annual report by emailing the Fair Housing Center at info@bostonfairhousing.org, or calling 617-399-0491. Our IRS Form 990 and our most recent audited financial statements are available at www.bostonfairhousing.org/membership.htm.
For Fiscal Year 2008 (July 1, 2007-June 30, 2008), the Fair Housing Center's total income was $640,121. Total program expenses were $416,274, fundraising expenses were $63,717, and administration expenses were $81,075. The Fair Housing Center's end of year assets were $117,383, of which $14,083 was unrestricted.
