To learn more about Fair Housing, see below for a list of the educational resources:

Articles

• March 15, 2021: New lawsuit accuses 88 landlords, broker firms of bias against renters with vouchers
• April 17, 2020: April is Fair Housing Month
• Dec. 19, 2017: Boston. Racism. Image. Reality. The Spotlight Team takes on our hardest question: Does Boston deserve its racist reputation?
• Dec. 16, 2017: A better Boston? The choice is ours
• Dec. 15, 2017: For blacks in Boston, a power outage
• Dec. 14, 2017: The bigot in the stands, and other stories
• Dec. 13, 2017: Lost on campus, in a sea of white
• Dec. 12, 2017: Color line persists, in sickness as in health
• Dec. 11, 2017: A brand-new Boston, even whiter than the old

Workshops

• Fair Housing in Newton: Guidance for Policy Leaders. June 18, 2024, Presented by Henry Korman of Counsel, Klein Hornig LLP. The workshop presentation can be found here.

• Fair Housing 101: Training for Real Estate Professionals. January 17, 2024, Presented by Kelly F. Vieira, Esq., Director of Investigations & Outreach Housing Discrimination Testing Program, Suffolk Law School. The workshop presentation can be found here. and the recording can be found here.  

• Landlord/Tenant Fair Housing Training. December 5, 2023, Presented by Paige A. Stopperich, Fair Housing Testing Coordinator, Clinical Fellow and Kelly F. Vieira, Esq., Director of Investigations & Outreach Housing Discrimination Testing Program, Suffolk Law School. The workshop presentation can be found here. and the recording can be found here.  

• Fair Housing 101: Training for Real Estate Professionals.  January 19, 2023, Presented by Kelly F. Vieira, Esq., Director of Investigations & Outreach Housing Discrimination Testing Program, Suffolk Law School. The workshop presentation can be found here.

• WestMetro HOME Consortium Fair Housing Workshop: Moving Forward with Fair Housing. April 11 and 29, 2021
  Presented by Judi Barrett, Principal and Managing Director of Barrett Planning Group LLC. The workshop presentation can be found here, and the recording can be found here.
  
  
• Fair Housing Compliance: Considerations for Land Use, Zoning, Planning Decisions - Interactive Workshop. October 23, 2017
  Presented by Jennifer M. Goldson, AICP, Founder of JM Goldson Community Preservation & Planner. The workshop presentation can be found here and the handout can be found here.

Reports

• Resident Experiences of Inclusion and Bias in Inclusionary Housing in Cambridge | Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University      (Newton Fair Housing Committee's Summary Presentation)

• Qualified Renters Need Not Apply: Race and Voucher Discrimination in the Metro Boston Rental Housing Market | The Boston Foundation

Executive Order, Court Cases

• Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation. January 20, 2021
• NAACP, Boston Chapter v. Kemp, 721 F. Supp. 361 (D. Mass. 1989)

Books/Film Media

1. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America | By Richard Rothstein
   “In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation—that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation—the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments—that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.”
   
   
2. The Fair Housing Act | New York Times
   A 3-minute video exploring the role of government in prohibiting housing discrimination, 48 years after the housing legislation was enacted. To watch the video, click here.
   
   
3. Segregation by Design
   A17-minute video exploring the book, The Color of Law. To watch the video, click here.
   
   
4. Race: The Power of an Illusion
   A PBS series that traces the historic roots of discrimination. The series includes three episodes – The Difference Between Us, The Story We Tell, and The House We Live In. “The House We Live In” focuses on segregation and discrimination in housing. To watch the entire series to learn how these issues impact your community today, click here. To view an excerpt of “The House We Live In” episode, click here.
   
   
5. The Disturbing History of the Suburbs | Adam Ruins Everything
   A 6-minute video about redlining, the racist housing policy from Jim Crow era that still affects communities today. Click here to watch the video.
   
   
6. Why Cities Are Still So Segregated | NPR
   To watch the video, click here.
   
   
7. America Divided: A House Divided
   Norman Lear explores the housing divide in New York City, where he is confronted by one of the nation’s starkest images of inequality: a record number of homeless people living in the shadows of luxury skyscrapers filled with apartments purposely being kept empty. The creator of “All in the Family,” “Good Times” and “The Jeffersons” speaks with tenants, realtors, homeless people, housing activists, landlords and city officials — investigating the Big Apple’s affordability crisis, hedge fund speculation on residential housing, and a legacy of racist discrimination that still persists today. To watch the video, click here.
   
   
8. A Matter of Place
   Connecting past struggles for fair housing to contemporary incidents of housing bias based on race, sexual orientation, disability, and source of income, the film presents three stories of people who faced housing discrimination in present-day New York City. They poignantly describe the injuries inflicted on them during these incidents, as well as their resolve to fight for justice. To watch the video, click here.
   
   
9. Seven Days Documentary: 50th Anniversary of the Fair Housing Act
   When a single gunshot rings out at a Memphis motel, civil unrest breaks out across the country. President Johnson, long frustrated by his inability to improve housing conditions for people of color, scrambles to use the crisis to push a fair housing bill through a reluctant Congress. With few days to spare and many arms to twist, he and two young Senators – Edward Brooke and Walter Mondale – attempt to pass the bill before the slain civil rights leader is laid to rest. The Fair Housing Act was ultimately passed just seven days after Dr. Martin Luther King’s untimely death. Produced by the National Fair Housing Alliance in collaboration with Nationwide, this short film reminds us of the backdrop that led to the passage of this landmark civil rights law and its deep significance and compels us all to complete the unfinished work of the Act. To watch the video, click here.
   
   
10. Show Me A Hero | HBO
    The six-part miniseries depicts the true story of Yonkers, where a federal judge issued a desegregation order mandating that low-income housing be built in the city’s middle-class, white neighborhoods. To watch the video, click here.

Podcasts

1. "Building Stuyvesant Town: A Mid-Century Controversy" | The Bowery Boys: New York City History
   The residential complexes Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, built in the late 1940s, incorporating thousands of apartments within a manicured "campus" on the east side, seemed to provide the perfect solution for New York City's 20th century housing woes. It would be a home for returning World War II veterans and a new mode of living for young families. As long as you were white. To listen to the podcast, click here.
   
   
2. “Location! Location! Location!” | NPR
   Ira Glass talks to a 15-year old girl who was kicked out of school after administrators discovered her mother using her grandfather’s address to send her to a school just a few miles away. The difference in education was astounding. A reporter talks to a group of New York City residents about their frustrating attempts to rent an apartment. With hidden microphones, the listener hears the landlords tell the apartment hunters that there’s nothing available. But that’s not necessarily true. To listen to the podcast, click here.
   
   
3. “The red line: Racial Disparities in Lending” | From The Center of Investigative Reporting
   Reporters analyzed 31 million government mortgage records and determined that people of color were more likely than whites to be denied a conventional home loan in 61 metro areas, including Atlanta, Detroit and Washington. That’s after controlling for a variety of factors, including applicants’ income, loan amount and neighborhood.
   
   No city better exemplifies the trend than Philadelphia, where so-called up-and-coming neighborhoods abound – and where African American applicants were nearly three times as likely as whites to be denied a home loan. That’s where reporters Aaron Glantz and Emmanuel Martinez tell the story of two loan applicants – one black, one white – whose experiences raise larger questions about who gets to buy a home, and who doesn’t, in America. To listen to the podcast, click here.
   
   
4. “House Rules” | This American Life
   Where you live is important. It can dictate quality of schools and hospitals, as well as things like cancer rates, unemployment, or whether the city repairs roads in your neighborhood. The episode tells stories about destiny by address. To listen to the podcast, click here.
   
   
5. "Danielle Samalin on the importance of fair housing" | Housing Wire
   HousingWire’s Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler interviews Danielle Samalin, CEO of Framework Homeownership.  In this episode, Samalin discusses the importance of fair housing, and how homeowners can protect their biggest and most valuable investment toward wealth creation. To listen to the podcast, click here.