Engagement in our Fair Housing Study
Engagement in our Fair Housing Study
We, as local governments and public housing authorities in the Baltimore region, are teaming up to improve life and increase opportunities for people in their homes and communities.
You are a key player in our work to make this happen!
Below you will find some background information about our 2025 Fair Housing Plan and a quick survey. You can let us know through this survey if you would like to participate in one or more of our working groups or if you know of any organizations we should reach out to for input.
About the Fair Housing Act and Plan
Back in 1968, Congress passed the Fair Housing Act to address housing discrimination and historical unfair policies. This included redlining, segregation, and other 20th century discriminatory policies that kept people from investments and opportunities because of their race, religion, or nationality.
Because of this, every five years, we must:
Examine data to see if people in our region face unequal access to jobs, education, health, and communities with low poverty. We look to see if that inequality corresponds to characteristics protected by fair housing laws. This includes race, having a disability, what country you come from, your religion, your gender, and if you have children.
See if policies under our control or influence could still be contributing to these disparities, even if by mistake. If so, these policies can be considered "impediments to fair housing choice."
Create action steps to address any of those policies and impediments.
Put those action steps in our 2025-2030 plans for using federal housing funds, and then we take action. (Now we are implementing our 2020-2025 plans.)
Right now, we are in the early stages of creating our 2025 Fair Housing Plan.
An important part of creating this plan will be to talk to people about their homes, their communities, and any barriers they face. This is where you come in. How would you like to be involved? Who should we be talking with during this process?
Take our survey on the following tabs.
For more information, contact Dan Pontious, BMC Housing Policy Coordinator, at dpontious@baltometro.org or (410) 732-0500 x1055. Your input is valuable!
Second Meeting: Baltimore-Area Fair Housing Study
This is our second virtual large stakeholder meeting for this study. We will see the latest data on fair-housing-related disparities in the region, hear updates from our topic-specific small groups, and talk about next steps. Our third large meeting will be in September, and we anticipate a draft document by the end of October.
Please register in advance for this meeting. If you are not yet part of a smaller working group (fair housing enforcement, renter fair housing concerns, and housing supply and siting of affordable housing), please indicate that in your registration:
https://baltometro-org.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIldeqsqjkvH90QxKY4oR9RF206fQxQFojW
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
- Files 5
- Second Meeting Agenda 17July2024.pdf
- Second Meeting Slides 17July 2024.pdf
- Land Use by Acres_all jurisdictions.xlsx
- Balt-area_high_density_zoning_maps.pdf
- Enforcement Mechanisms and Protected Classes.xlsx
Kickoff Meeting: Baltimore-Area Fair Housing Study
Thanks to the 68 people who joined us for the first meeting for the 2025 Baltimore-Area Fair Housing Study! We went over our proposed process for developing this study and shared initial data. We also introduced our main consultant, Root Policy Research, our other partners, Baltimore Regional Housing Partnership and Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance, and the co-chairs for our working groups. Our slides for this meeting are posted at the in the "Files" tab below, along with a draft resident survey and the results from a similar survey we conducted for our 2020 document.
Please send any feedback on the draft resident survey posted in the "Files" tab below to heidi@rootpolicy.com by Wed., May 27. Please fill out the survey above if you are interested in participating in a small working group and/or have suggestions of organizations we should talk with as we conduct this study.