A Regional Fair Housing Plan for Baltimore? Baltimore City and the five counties that surround it have produced a new “Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice” (AI), a fair housing planning document mandated by federal fair housing regulations. The regional portion of the report incorporates some of the work of Baltimore Regional Housing Coalition members (including PRRAC), and calls for a regional structure for planning, coordination, and delivery of housing programs. The report also references the regional housing mobility program that has been in place since 2003 as part of the Thompson v. HUD case. A public hearing on the plan is scheduled for January 18th at the Baltimore City Hall. Read more on the BRHC’s website.
Minnesota Department Of Education Hearing On School Diversity And Integration: Several members of the National Coalition on School Diversity’s Steering Committee and Research Advisory Panel traveled to Minneapolis for an important hearing on the future of state school diversity rules in Minnesota. See the NCSD website for more details.
Other news and Resources
Partnership links housing assistance with educational opportunities: HUD recently announced a partnership with GreatSchools, a national non-profit, to provide parents participating in the Section 8 program, and parents in public housing, with information on their children’s educational choices. The program echoes a pilot effort PRRAC led with the Baltimore Regional Housing Campaign in 2008-10 to provide educational counseling to families participating in the Baltimore Housing Mobility Program. See the HUD announcement and links here – and please forward to colleagues you know who are working with voucher families.
Court Preliminarily Enjoins Enforcement of Alabama Anti-Immigrant Law: A federal judge in Alabama has issued a preliminary injunction blocking the application of a provision of Alabama’s anti-immigrant law that threatened to push immigrant families out of their mobile homes. Relman, Dane & Colfax is representing the plaintiffs in the suit, in conjunction with lawyers from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Immigration Law Center, the ACLU Immigrants Rights Project, and LatinoJustice. Read more about the decision here.
