Grtr. N.O. Fair Housing Action Center changes name
7th January 2020 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
With a string of successful efforts behind it and another pivotal policy summit just ahead, one of the state’s largest fair housing advocacy organizations is celebrating a name change that better reflects the group’s ever expanding mission.
Last week, the former Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center announced a new name – the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center. The change comes as the organization marks its 25th year of existence and engagement in a battle against discrimination and unfair treatment in the housing industry.
Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center Executive Director Cashauna Hill told The Louisiana Weekly last week that the adjustment on the group’s moniker reflects the LFHAC’s growth.
“The name change is a really positive, important step,” Hill said. “It’s important that people throughout the state know that we’re here as a resource when they experience discrimination or denial in housing.”
Hill said that in addition to such legal support and representation, the organization will continue and expand its lobbying and educational efforts aimed at influencing government policies and funding at a local and state level.
“We hope to continue our statewide advocacy for expanding housing equity and to represent and litigate for people around the state who have experienced discrimination in housing,” she said.
Over the last few years, the center has marked numerous achievements locally and statewide, including helping to pass a state law penalizing landlords from illegally withholding security deposits; the adoption of a state law blocking preventing the eviction of survivors of domestic violence; two court rulings protecting people in Lake Charles and Baton Rouge with disabilities who are experiencing addiction recovery as they strive to retain their residences in Oxford Houses; and a 2012 settlement for victims of sexual harassment and assault by a public housing maintenance worker in Bossier City.
Also of significance has been a settlement with a major financial institution for the company’s use of discriminatory maintenance practices that resulted in a fund for improving home ownership and community stabilization in communities of color in Baton Rouge and New Orleans; and a $62-million settlement with the state and federal government on behalf of people across southern Louisiana who suffered as a result of racial discrimination practices in the post-Hurricane Katrina Road Home program.
In addition to pressing on with such specific advocacy and legal services, the LFHAC will hold its “Fit for a King” policy summit in New Orleans on Jan. 16 highlighted by a keynote address by Isabel Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the influential book, “The Warmth of Other Suns.”
Hill said the summit, which is taking place during the action center’s 25th anniversary year, will bring together about 200 advocates, policy directors, community leaders and others engaged in the fight for fair treatment and non-discrimination in housing.
This year’s summit theme is “Geographies of Change: 25 Years of Fair Housing Advocacy,” and the event will include a slate of panels and workshops preceded by a reception on Jan. 15. Hill said a significant focus of both the summit and the resulting policy efforts will be linking historical developments with persisting unfairness in housing practices in communities of color. That will include an analysis of the way the Great Migration – when much of the South’s Black population moved northward for better work and housing opportunities in the Northeast and Midwest during the first couple decades of the 20th century – still impacts current and persisting housing trends in home ownership and displacement within communities of color today.
Hill said that the LFHAC’s evolution, growth and name change reflect the continued and unfortunate existence of housing discrimination. She said that as long as people of color, the poor, the disabled or other vulnerable populations suffer from discriminatory, predatory or unfair housing policy and practices, the LFHAC will fight on in its mission that includes achieving the goals of the landmark federal Fair Housing Act of 1968.
“In doing this work, there’s always the hope that there will no longer be a need for organizations like us,” she said, “that people will be able to live in their communities free of discrimination and have opportunities to live in communities of their choice.”
Despite that beacon of hope, she said, challenges, obstacles and illegal practices are still rife in the housing industry and market, especially in Louisiana. But that hope persists nonetheless.
“The movement around housing equity would not have come this far without groups like ours advocating for change, or without committed community members who keep a focus on fair-housing opportunities,” she said.
This article originally published in the January 6, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
