The Fair Housing Institute conducts research and advocacy in the areas of fair housing, fair lending and insurance redlining. Through the Fair Housing Institute, fair housing advocates, housing professionals, community leaders, political and administrative representatives, representatives from corporate and charitable institutions, and members of the clergy are brought together to discuss the crisis in fair housing and work towards finding solutions.

We are trying to determine how researchers in fair housing can better access information about incidents of housing discrimination from the City of Philadelphia and the role of data collection agencies such as HUD, the Police Department and Human Relations Commissions in facilitating the documenting of such incidents for reporting purposes.

We are working with fair housing advocates throughout the Delaware Valley to establish a more regional approach to the fair housing advocacy.

We distribute a newsletter to housing groups, tenant organizations, landlord organizations, realtors and community leaders that provides up-to-date information about developments in fair housing and fair lending regionally and nationally. It is also made available on the internet, through our web-site.

We have produced a fair housing guide to teach individuals their rights under the federal, state and local fair housing laws; where to go (and how to proceed) in order to enforce those rights; and how to get along better with new neighbors.

The Institute has sponsored research designed to provide a spatial presentation of the relationships between race, income, owner-occupied housing, receipt of public assistance, and the incidences of housing discrimination--towards directing a more focused approach to reducing community tension and eliminating housing discrimination.

We plan to gather a meeting of lenders in the Philadelphia area to discuss fair lending issues, and move towards the adoption of a Best Lending Practices Agreement for all lenders in the Delaware Valley. We hope to be able to gather a meeting of Insurance sales brokers to discuss ways to broaden homeowners and renter's insurance opportunities for all families in the area, and a meeting of media executives to discuss how inflammatory reporting can worsen neighborhood tensions, what messages about people living in affordable housing are generated in the media, and what effect these messages have on the public perception of low-income individuals, and Section 8 residents in particular.

Check out the most recent issue of the Fair Housing Alerting Bulletin, a summary of developments in fair housing and fair lending.

You can also link directly to other fair housing resources.