• It's back to school time! Therefore, this is the perfect moment to get a deeper education on the history of racial segregation and discrimination in housing. Consider reading The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein. The Color of Law takes readers through an engaging and powerful history of housing segregation in the United States, and we highly recommend it. If the book seems a bit daunting, check out Richard Rothstein’s interview on NPR to learn more.

• Let’s talk Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing. While the federal Fair Housing Act declared that housing discrimination based on protected characteristics is illegal, the Act also charged the government to do all that it can to further the efforts of fair housing. This means that federal, state, and local governments have a responsibility to actively advance fair housing and eliminate historic and systemic barriers to creating open, accessible, and inclusive community. Recently, HUD announced its intention to roll back the previous administration’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, which set out stronger guidelines for cities to comply with this long-ignored provision of the law. Read some of the coverage of this announcement, such as in The Wall Street Journal, Slate, NPR and HousingWire. Also check out Curbed’s article from January explaining the AFFH rule.

• Download our Fair Housing Toolkit to learn about the history of housing segregation and discrimination, your fair housing rights, educational resources, and ways that you can advance fair housing in your community.

• See what residential segregation looks like today in major metropolitan regions across the nation and where you live through The New York Times' “Mapping Segregation” tool.

• Discrimination based on lawful source of income -- or where the money a prospective tenant pays the rent comes from -- is pervasive across the state of New York. However, in most NY counties and cities, there are no legal protections for people using other types of income to pay rent, such as housing vouchers or rental subsidies, from discrimination. For this reason, the #BanIncomeBiasNY Coalition, which the FHJC is a founding member of, is working to amend the State’s Human Rights law to expand the protected classes to include lawful source of income. Click here to join the #BanIncomeBiasNY Coalition. You can also learn more about lawful source of income discrimination by reading the Coalition's fact sheet.

• How can you advance fair housing in your community? Way #20 in our list of 30 Ways You Can Advance Fair Housing is to register to vote and get others registered to vote. Exercising our right to vote is one of the most profound ways in which we raise our voice in our democratic society. If you are not already registered, visit https://www.usa.gov/register-to-vote to find out how you can register to vote in your state. You can find out who your elected representatives are and how to contact them here: https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials.

• Want to learn more about what policy priorities the FHJC is focusing on right now? Read our 2017 - 2018 Public Policy Agenda to learn more. You can also read about some of our accomplishments in the past year on our Fair Housing Policy Initiatives web page.

• We are conducting fair housing presentations and events in congregations and communities across the NYC region. If you are interested in hosting an event in your community, click here.

• We are training representatives of diverse faith communities into leaders and educators will help us achieve this mission. Fair Housing Leaders will attend an in depth training where they will develop a fluency in fair housing issues and in how to use the FHJC’s Fair Housing Toolkit, among other resources, to educate and engage their community. If you are interested in attending a leadership training and volunteering to become a Fair Housing Leader you can email the FHJC’s Education Coordinator Caitlin Mroz at cmroz@fairhousingjustice.org.

• Watch a series of videos in which we ask a diverse group of civil rights and religious leaders to explain what the beloved community means to them. Also, watch and share our "Building the Beloved Community - A Renewed Call to Action" video to learn more about why now is the time to make fair housing a living reality for all.