Fair Housing 2.0 - Our Ongoing Outreach and Education to Protect Housing Rights

MHAS is pleased to announce a new grant for our fair housing education and outreach project from the Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP) of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Managing last year’s FHIP grant demonstrated to me the importance of the work we do through this grant, and I am eager to build upon what we did in 2017. We are particularly excited to expand our work, and connect with new community partners,in the Los Angeles Promise Zone.I have met and talked to so many people who have told me how helpful our monthly fair housing tips have been to them. We are happy to be able to start up a new series of tips on how fair housing laws protect tenants with disabilities. We will begin sending the new tips out soon, so join our fair housing e-mail list and stay tuned.Through our previous work, I have seen mental health case managers and clinicians learn to spot discrimination early and work with clients to seek reasonable accommodations, landlords become aware of obligations they did not previously understand, and tenants begin to advocate for themselves. So we will, of course, continue to provide legal advice to clients and technical assistance to housing and service providers regarding fair housing issues. We are also happy to be reconnecting with community partners to schedule fair housing workshops in the community, and we look forward to making new connections through our outreach. If you have a question about fair housing or are interested in scheduling a fair housing training, please call our office.The more tenants and case managers attend our trainings and read our tips, the greater the chance that, when a tenancy is threatened, the tenant or one of the tenant's service providers will immediately consider whether there is a fair housing issue to consider, and act accordingly. When landlords learn about their obligations under fair housing laws, they are more likely to act in a manner consistent with those laws, which results in more stability and security for people with disabilities.Project funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Fair Housing Initiatives Program, Grant #FEOI180041-01-00.