PA Fair Housing Organizations United and Friends of Fair Housing
Announcing Statewide
#DefendCivilRights Campaign
Deadline Friday, October 18, 2019 @ 11:59 p.m. (EST)
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We are coordinating a massive social media action effort to oppose the proposed “disparate impact” rule change by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that would substantially weaken enforcement of the federal Fair Housing Act and adversely impact all protected classes. We are looking for your organization and individual advocates to submit comments and share opposition against HUD's proposed revised Disparate Impact rule at: http://www.defendcivilrights.org/make-comment.
We are also looking for private individuals and advocates to share this information with their communities and encourage public participation. Our goal is to submit 100,000 comments by Friday, October 18, 2019 @ 11:59 PM (EST)!
About Disparate Impact Rule
As you may know, the Disparate Impact rule is a longstanding legal tool to fight discrimination and ensure equal housing opportunity under the Fair Housing Act. It requires banks, landlords, and other housing providers to choose policies that apply fairly to all people. Some policies that seem neutral in theory can unfairly exclude certain groups of people or segregate particular communities in practice. This protection allows us to identify and prevent harmful, inequitable, and unjustified policies, thereby ensuring that everyone can be treated fairly.
Proposed Changes to the Rule
The proposed changes will gut the longstanding legal tool known as disparate impact under the Fair Housing Act. Thus far, this is one of the most extreme moves by the Administration to dismantle anti-discrimination laws. The proposed rule would allow financial institutions, insurance companies, and housing providers to engage in covert discriminatory practices by dramatically weakening disparate-impact liability. This proposed revised Disparate Impact rule would effectively destroy 45-year-old protection against housing discrimination, and would pave the way for widespread harm to millions of people across the country while businesses pad their profit margins. Specifically, the proposed rule provides:
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Overwhelming obstacles to prove discrimination: Victims of discrimination will face a drastically higher burden to prove a disparate impact claim under the Fair Housing Act, making it virtually impossible to succeed. Victims are asked to play a rigged game of whack-a-mole, trying to guess what justifications a defendant might invoke and preemptively debunk them.
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Profits above all else: Language in the proposed rule suggests that certain practices or policies that are profitable, could be immune from a challenge for its discriminatory impact.
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Discrimination by algorithm: The proposed rule would provide special defenses for business practices that rely on statistics or algorithms. Disparate impact is a critical tool to rein in discrimination in the use of algorithmic models — such as redlining, credit scoring, pricing, marketing, and automated underwriting systems. These can have starkly discriminatory effects but can operate as a hidden box, making those discriminatory effects challenging to attribute to any person’s intentional discrimination. HUD’s proposed rule could effectively immunize such covert discrimination by an algorithm.
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No data, no records, no accountability: Businesses are no longer receive any incentives to collect essential data that can reveal discrimination. This means that victims of discrimination will be unable to identify whether discrimination is happening and cannot challenge it if they do detect discrimination.
Call to Action
If the changes to the rule prevail, millions of our families, friends, neighbors, and communities will become more vulnerable to housing discrimination.
PA Fair Housing Organizations urgently requests advocacy organizations and individuals serving and representing all protected classes to send a comment letter opposing HUD’s proposed destructive changes to the 2013 Disparate Impact Rule. Final comments are due next Friday, October 18, 2019 at 11:59 PM (EST).
Take action now, and join the campaign to Defend Civil Rights!
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Submit a comment telling HUD that you oppose the administration’s attempt to destroy this crucial civil rights protection and open the floodgates to discrimination.
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Ask your friends and family to take action and submit a comment.
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View our resources for images and posts to share on social media.
Thank you for your support!
#DefendCivilRights
#PAFairHousingUnited
#FairHousing4All
#YinzerForFairHousing
Please don't ignore this. TAKE ACTION NOW!!
Remember the repuglycons have tried to eviscerate our voting rights. Understand the negative nature of the incumbent in the white house and those he's brought on board to dismantle our rights to have decent, affordable homes. We are in no position to ruminate over what to do, while they're already deciding to ride roughshod over us, and move on to the next onslaught.
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New law will protect generations from toxic lead paint. We knew our message had gotten through. We hoped it would be enough.
Over the past few weeks, the Lead Free Philly Coalition, led by PCCY’s Colleen McCauley, visited with members of City Council to discuss for the last time the desperate need to enact a new lead paint law to protect very young children. PCCY supporters heeded our calls on social media and email alerts and reached out to their council members. Parents urged us to stick the landing.
And then, on Thursday, after impassioned testimony from lead law proponents, including one from Picasso Project Director Tim Gibbon who shared his own harrowing experience regarding his daughter's lead poisoning, which necessitated a hasty move out of their rental, the final vote was called.
The assembled members of Council voted unanimously in favor, briefly stunning the gallery until they erupted in cheers and a prolonged standing ovation.
Effective October 2020, the City of Philadelphia, which will require landlords to test their pre-1978 properties for lead every four years, will boast one of the nation’s most protective ordinances, preventing the vast majority of the 1,500 cases of childhood lead poisonings reported every year. This week’s dramatic lead law victory, resulting in Philadelphia’s most significant public health initiative since the smoking ban in 2006, was decades in the making.
For more than twenty years, PCCY has been the galvanizing force in the city in the fight to protect kids from deadly lead paint, seeping out through the cracks in walls and settling on home surfaces well within the inadvertent reach of crawling toddlers.
Shelly Yanoff, who lead PCCY for 26 years (she retired in 2012), started the work on poisoning prevention well before the issue reached the mainstream, starting with a modest hepa-vac lending service for parents. She was soon joined by Colleen and a PCCY-led coalition, and their work, along with a powerful collaboration with Councilperson Blondell Reynolds Brown, culminated in Philadelphia’s lead law in 2011.
But due to a last-minute amendment to the legislation which would ultimately render the law unenforceable, what should have been a triumph was relegated to heartbreak and poisoning rates remained intractably high.
As Shelly and Colleen shared a teary-eyed celebratory embrace after the vote, their sense of relief was palpable. Colleen’s work now shifts from tireless dialogue and advocacy to vigorous scrutiny with stakeholders and city officials to implement the landmark law.
This week’s victory, of course, would not have been possible without the help of so many. While we’ve listed just a few in this space, please refer to our Facebook page for a comprehensive list.
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PHILADELPHIA, NORRISTOWN & CHESTER
FHRC provides: Training to Non- Profits on Fair Housing
If your a non-profit agency, staff or consumers need training on
Fair Housing Laws
or call 215-625-0700 ext #12 to schedule a training
Our Services
- Complaint Intake
- Complaint Investigation
- Compliance Resolution
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FHRC Provides Compliance Training Services
Fair Housing Best Practice Training:
"How to Get Caught Complying with the Law"
A 2.5 hour interactive training for housing providers, property managers, leasing agents and maintenance personnel on Fair Housing Laws
Sliding scale fee schedule available
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Consider making a monthly donation to FHRC. Every day, civil rights agencies are under a constant threat of losing funding. Fair housing (aka anti-discrimination in housing) is one of our most powerful civil rights protections. Civil rights are our means to full access to political power, economic opportunities and social benefits. The education, outreach and advocacy work done by fair housing agencies is integral to striving towards an open and just society that values equity and equality for all. Your donations are used to save federal, state and local tax dollars by preventing homelessness, institutional care and displacement. At the same time, your assistance promotes the preservation of independent living and the stabilization of families and children!
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