Episode 26 - Uncovering Discrimination: The Fight for Fair Housing with Erika Fotsch and Brady Ripperger

Speaker 2: 0:05

We call it discrimination with a smile, because you have no idea that you were discriminated against right.

Speaker 3: 0:12

We have this amazing intake team will take down their story and we can walk them through their options.

Speaker 2: 0:19

Dep outside and look around at your neighbors. Does everyone look like you? Does everyone love like you? Does everyone have the same abilities as you? If that's the case, for housing is not alive and well in your community.

Speaker 3: 0:33

That is no longer a pet and therefore it does not qualify as a pet under their no pet policy. Some of the hardest things I have to do at an event is somebody comes out to me and they're like oh, this doesn't happen to me. And I'm looking at them. I was like I hate to break it to you, but it could be like people think that discrimination is a civil rights 1960s problem.

Speaker 2: 1:00

We are making sure that every single Hoosier or someone that calls Indiana their home state, they have a fair and equal shot at finding whatever types of housing they want.

Speaker 3: 1:16

Welcome to Homeward Indie, a bi-weekly conversation where we meet the people working to end homelessness in Indianapolis and hear their stories. I'm Elliott Zanz.

Speaker 1: 1:25

And I'm Steve Barnhart. Welcome listeners. I'm happy to introduce two guests today, Erica Fodge and Brady Rippinger, both from the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana. Please join us as we listen in on how the Fair Housing Act of 1968 is being implemented to this day in Central Indiana. Erica and Brady, thank you so much for taking part with Homeward Indie.

Speaker 2: 2:07

Thanks for having us. We're really excited to be here.

Speaker 3: 2:09

Yeah, we're super excited to be here.

Speaker 1: 2:10

You guys are with the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana, correct?

Speaker 3: 2:15

Yeah, quite a mouthful, right yeah it is.

Speaker 1: 2:18

Is that how you usually refer to yourselves, or do you kind of shortcut it somehow?

Speaker 3: 2:23

If I'm meeting somebody new, I'll start with the full thing, and then we always pretty much shorten it to the FHCTI.

Speaker 1: 2:27

All right. Well, why don't you tell us a little bit about what the organization does? Either one of you can go All right.

Speaker 2: 2:35

Well, the Fair Housing Center is the only existing advocacy nonprofit in the state of Indiana that focuses on eliminating and addressing housing discrimination. So that encompasses a lot of different things within the housing industry and the housing sphere, but we really focus in on determining and making sure that your rights are not being violated because you're black, because you have a minor child, because you have a disability, you're in a same-sex relationship, you were in a hijab or go to a certain temple or place of worship. We are making sure that every single Hoosier or someone that calls Indiana their home state, they have a fair and equal shot at finding whatever types of housing they want. So, whether that be they're trying to buy a house, trying to buy land, they're trying to rent an apartment, trying to get a mortgage, an appraisal, homeowners insurance, renters insurance anything that's really directly or indirectly related to the housing industry, we are making sure that discrimination and bias, whether implicit or direct, is not taking place in our system. So it's a very large task that we've got to do especially as one of the only groups in the state here. But we exist in Indianapolis. That's where our main headquarters, our office are and we serve the central 24 counties. So kind of the visual I say is go east and west to both sides of the state. North to about Kokomo, muncie, anderson, down south to Bloomington. But as we all know on here today, discrimination does not know service areas. So we've got to go outside of that. We've had several cases and clients call us from all over the state, southern Indiana all the way up to the tip top of the northern part of the state, and so the service area is there to kind of help us with our grants. But we unfortunately do have to go outside of that quite a bit.

Speaker 1: 4:28

Just a general question are there more than just you guys of this organization, or are you one of a kind here? It's a great question.

Speaker 2: 4:37

So we often get confused with being a government agency. We are actually completely private. We're a private nonprofit. There are several other entities doing the same types of work across the country. Ohio, I think, has five to seven groups. Michigan has five to seven groups. They're all doing the same mission work, but they're all private. You're all autonomous from each other? Exactly yes, so we are the only one doing this type of work in Indiana.

Speaker 1: 5:04

How did you guys get started?

Speaker 2: 5:06

So there is a national group called the National Fair Housing Alliance and their mission is exactly like ours, but just on a national scale. And they kind of took a step back back in 2012, and they realized that there was not really a functioning fair housing group in the state of Indiana. And, being the state and kind of the politics of the state, fair housing is very much so important here, especially the advocacy around the work that we do, and so they developed and applied for a grant from HUD, and we were often running at the end of 2012 when we officially opened our doors in January of 2013.

Speaker 1: 5:45

So you're a little over 10 years old, then yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 5:50

Celebrating our 12th anniversary this year.

Speaker 1: 5:53

Have the two of you been with the organization the whole time or you've joined more recently?

Speaker 3: 6:00

So I'm a really new person here. I've only been here oh two years in June, but I'm super excited to be here and super excited to be on this amazing team we're actually at the largest we've ever been and so we're able to expand our services and help more people and educate more people around their fair housing rights. And I just think it's kind of telling that this organization has been around 12 years, but the Fair Housing Act has been around 55, 56 years now. So we have an uphill battle ahead of us, and so just spreading the word and letting people know that these protections are in place and really empowering the community around it to reach out to us and let them know that this resource exists is super important.

Speaker 1: 6:41

How many people are on staff here?

Speaker 2: 6:45

We've got a total of nine full-time staff members. So when we first started it was about five. For a majority of the first 10 years it was a staff of five, and then we have been lucky enough to grow and expand our resources to nine this year.

Speaker 1: 6:59

Oh, excellent. So let's go back to about 10 years ago. There's this national organization saying we need someone here in Indiana. How did they go about finding the people and how did that happen?

Speaker 2: 7:17

So Amy Nelson actually is the founding executive director of our agency and, similar to how we started about 12 years ago, they're actually starting a group in Memphis, tennessee, this year as well. So really the process of that is you analyze the funding and the need kind of the demand. And so the National Fair Housing Alliance applied for the funds to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development through their FIP initiatives, so their Fair Housing Initiative programs program, and that allowed us to open our doors. So we were founded with certain founding board members. We still actually have one of our founding board members currently, which is really exciting. And then Amy Nelson is still on our team. She's been a strong force to keep us going the last 12 years or so.

Speaker 1: 8:05

Is Amy local here or did she moved here as you started?

Speaker 2: 8:09

So Amy is a champion in the Fair Housing Movement. She has been well over 25 years of experience, so I think it's someone that Eric and I both look up to professionally and personally. But she moved. She's born in the Dakotas, spent some time all over, kind of did some work for Fair Housing and Home of Virginia, which is in Virginia, and then moved over here once she was hired for the position.

Speaker 3: 8:32

And Brady's being really modest. We're not lucky that we got to nine people. We got to nine people because of Brady and Amy's work.

Speaker 1: 8:39

So I just want to point that out. So, brady, have you been with the?

Speaker 2: 8:42

organization since the start? I actually have not, so I graduated from a university here in May of 2013. And then this is my very first full-time job, that following winter.

Speaker 1: 8:53

So it's pretty close too. Yeah, pretty close, a little over 10 years. Okay, excellent, tell me a little bit about who you serve. How does that relationship happen and what does it look like?

Speaker 3: 9:11

Yeah. So people call our office for all kinds of different reasons, mostly related to housing. We help the people that we can and we also refer them to other agencies if our agency doesn't cover the issues that they're experiencing. But the people that we can actually help are the people who are experiencing housing discrimination. So if they're being treated differently because of a personal characteristic that's protected, we can help them. So the protected characteristics on a federal level we have seven of them. It's race, color, national origin, religion, disability, any family that has a minor child or multiple, and then gender or sex.

Speaker 1: 9:51

I'm impressed that you think it all falls to seven. As soon as I say a list like that, I'm like well, I get all but one.

Speaker 3: 9:59

And I went out of order too. So I was like, wait, let me not mess this up.

Speaker 1: 10:03

That was impressive.

Speaker 3: 10:04

But I am the education outreach coordinator, so if I couldn't do, the list.

Speaker 1: 10:06

It might be a little concerning.

Speaker 3: 10:10

So those are the protections we have on a federal level. Each locality might have additional protections. Here in Marion County we have a couple. The state of Indiana for all intents and purposes doesn't. That's the list that we have. There is ancestry which is highly correlated with national origin, but basically anybody who's experiencing discrimination because of one or more of those characteristics within the housing realm so rental or home ownership, anything kind of related to that is protected, and so they can call our agency and we have this amazing intake team will take down their story and we can walk them through their options as far as if they're interested in filing a complaint or anything like that, and then we can also open broader, systemic investigations if we notice that a particular you know, larger company that owns multiple properties. We notice a lot of the same problems with multiple properties. We even cross state lines, sometimes in partner with other fair housing organizations in other states, if property managers or people who own properties in multiple states are found to be violating fair housing laws.

Speaker 1: 11:13

What would be a typical scenario without naming names?

Speaker 2: 11:19

So it's very interesting, because there are seven federally protected classes. There's so much intersectionality between them, right? So oftentimes what we find is that we have a single mother calling in, but she also happens to be black, and so, right there, you have familial status protections, you have race and color protections and gender sex protections, and so there's a lot of intersectionality. But overall and this compares to national trends as well we find that persons with disabilities whether that be mental, physical, cognitive or intellectual those are the people that are contacting our office the most. Several reasons for that Our population is living longer. We are aging and living longer, which is great, but if you do live a long, healthy life, you're most likely at some point going to be a member of the protected class of disability, right? So you're not able to take care of yourself, you can't feed, you have struggle walking up and down stairs, there might be mental deterioration, memory or cognitive disabilities, and so that's one of the reasons that we kind of feel that disability is a higher complaint. But we also find that there are protections awarded to persons with disabilities under the Federal Fair Housing Act that are awarded just to people with disabilities, and those include certain protections to ensure that your property that you're living in or renting from or buying from is accessible. So multi-family properties with four or more units. There's a specific date March 13, 1991, if it was built on or after that date, it has to be made accessible to persons with physical disabilities. So that's one of the way that the Fair Housing Act adds some additional protections. A second way is that it allows people to request what are called reasonable accommodations or modifications. We all know that the housing stock, when you look at all these single-family houses or when you're going to buy or rent an apartment, most of the times it's not made for people with disabilities. And so a way that the Fair Housing Act really helped to award further protections and give persons with disabilities greater options and ability to choose wherever they want to live. You can make physical or structural or rules or policy-based accommodations or modifications to make you, wherever you want to live, accommodating and accessible to your disabilities, whether that be mental or physical. So going off of that disability is the most common protected class and allegations that we receive at the office across the state. But interestingly, when you kind of dig into the world of disabilities, oftentimes it's reasonable accommodations. So those more policy or rule-based exemptions that people are requesting, and within that kind of subset is people needing emotional support or service animals. So I think as a kind of a general country, we're kind of turning away from prescription drugs as much as we can to try to find more natural alternatives, and the medical industry, the psychologists, the therapists. There has been so much science saying that emotional support and service animals help people with physical and disabilities. Where the disconnect, though, and the work that we have to do, is that, even though the Fair Housing Act has been around since 1968, often, many times, landlords don't know their responsibilities under the Fair Housing Act, and so what that means is we have to have advocacy, like us, or education and outreach, like Erica does, to ensure that we're closing that gap from the housing perspectives or housing providers that do not know their rights or responsibilities. Going out of that, too, we also educate the general public. So if most people have never heard of the Fair Housing Act across the country, it's a real shame, because it's been around for 55 years. It's an extremely important tool in our toolkit for civil rights, but not enough people know about it, so I'm really excited to be here to get more of our mission out there.

Speaker 1: 15:20

I'm curious with the service animal. It sounds like that's kind of a hot topic, something that has changed within the industry in more recent years, and I know that's huge too when it comes to even access to public places, airports, things like that. But as it relates to housing, erica, when you named off those seven items, one of them was not something about the right to have an animal, correct? How does that work.

Speaker 3: 15:53

So for people with disabilities there are these things called reasonable modifications and reasonable accommodations. There's special protections in place for them, understanding that back in 1968, up until that point, I mean in the code of the act we still use the word handicapped. So we've come a long way in the realm of disabilities and how to speak about them and we're learning a lot more about them. And with that added protected class. That protected class didn't come in until 1988. So at that time it added for accommodations and modifications to housing, acknowledging the fact that there's so much of our housing stock is older than that and not designed with people with disabilities, different kinds of disabilities, in mind. And so where that comes into place when it comes to animals is a lot of. Let's just talk about apartment complexes, because it's the easiest route to go. A lot of them have a no pets policy and that's totally okay until somebody with a disability who needs a service animal or an assistance animal or an emotional support animal, depending on their disability and what they want to call it that is no longer a pet and therefore it does not qualify as a pet under their no pet policy. So they can go to their housing provider. They can say hello, I live here, I have a disability under the Fair Housing Act and I would like an accommodation to your no pets policy to allow my service animal, my assistance animal, my emotional support animal, what may it be, to live here with me. And as long as they qualify as somebody with a disability under the Fair Housing Act and they have that connection and why they need that animal, that housing provider has to allow it.

Speaker 1: 17:33

So I assume that's where you potentially might get a phone call. Absolutely From that individual saying I need this, but it's no pets allowed. I ran the idea, but it's no pets allowed. Do I have any options?

Speaker 3: 17:50

Yeah, so we get that call a lot. I also get a lot of arguing during different educational presentations from housing providers about animals. It's just a very it's a very hot topic and unfortunately it's just effects. If they have the disabilities and they need that animal, it is no longer a pet and there are no pets policies that they apply.

Speaker 1: 18:07

We are trying to start to eradicate and undo some of those harms. But are they allowed? I could see where the argument would be hey, this is going to hurt my facility in some way. Are they able to charge extra for it? Or anything like that.

Speaker 3: 18:23

No, so they can't charge any pet fees, any additional deposits, insurance, nothing like that can be charged to the person with a disability for any kind of accommodation.

Speaker 1: 18:32

It just needs to be built into their whole system.

Speaker 3: 18:34

It's just part of their service as a housing provider, to make sure that they are equitably a living乐, willing to accept their finances, willing to continue their commitment to their offering housing to people with disabilities, and they just so happen to have a tenant who has a disability who needs that animal. Now, of course, just like any reasonable person, that person has to, you know, make sure that their animals not disruptive and not being overly burdensome. Like there are lease agreements that have to be Maintained. But, honestly, service animals, as far as, like most cases, are like the best-behaved animals, so we haven't run into a lot of issues with that. But that is. That is obviously a concern so.

Speaker 1: 19:10

So once you've been able to intervene in some fashion, I'd like to kind of hear what that intervention looks like. But your experience so far is that's turned out to be okay. Those fears have not come about in terms of animals ruining the place or Barking or whatever the case may be.

Speaker 2: 19:32

I mean it's. You can't judge a book by its cover, right? So the thing is, you know you could have the best well-behaved dog and they just have a really bad day, and so they decided to bark all night because they didn't sleep well, you know. And so we have to kind of take on a case-by-case basis these animals, not make an entire assumption about a breed, assuming that they're, you know, dangerous for example like pit bulls. Unfortunately, and kind of going off of what Erica said too, is you are responsible for your animal right. So if the the animal bites a hole in the wall, you know you are responsible for a pain for that. That's above normal wear and tear. So disability is the most common protection, but I don't want to discredit any of the other protected classes.

Speaker 1: 20:17

Yes.

Speaker 2: 20:18

The second highest that we find is actually race, and we kind of mix that with color, and so we have done tremendous work in the lending industry to Ensure that the effects and the histories of redlining that are still haunting our black and brown neighborhoods today, we are trying to start to eradicate and undo some of those harms. I think that it is important to note that. You know we receive all sorts of complaints against all protected classes, and so this is a great question and kind of answer. You know, regardless if you have a disability or if you're alleging religion discrimination, etc.

Speaker 1: 20:53

So, yeah, what? What are the steps that you take?

Speaker 2: 20:56

Exactly so. Really, the thing that we pride ourselves the most is that we will answer every single call, email contact to our office, and Oftentimes people are so frustrated because they've contacted 20 different agencies and we're the only one to answer our phone. So we really pride ourselves on that and, honestly, the first step is just listening. They have been through such tremendous or traumatic experiences. Just letting them vent, just letting them share their story, cry whatever they need to do To share what is going on in their life, because housing is so critical to every component of your life your education, access to healthy foods, etc. So just letting them, you know, kind of get out what they need to get out and then really discussing and meeting them where they're at and saying, hey, here are what we provide. We might not be able to provide everything for you here, but we have got some great referrals for you over here, but more times than not we actually are able to help these people. So if they are alleging housing discrimination, we really get their story. We listen to see what has been done so far. Have you done any communication? Have you already filed any complaints? Let's figure out where you're at in this process already and where we can try to help advocate on your behalf. Oftentimes it's getting better written documentation To a housing provider stating you know, I do have Concerns that the neighbor next door is Targeting me because I'm gay or because I'm a lesbian, for example. So getting those written documents to kind of help prove a better case if it ever does end up in going into a corridor, you know filing a complaint and then you know just reminding them that we are here to answer any questions. You know, if you want to brainstorm an idea that think you might you know might be a good, good fit, we also can help you file a complaint and then sometimes we actually do ourselves get involved in enforcement action on behalf of a client. So Sometimes there's just such egregious forms of discrimination. All discrimination is horrific, but there are times that we feel as an agency we also need to get involved to send a larger message to the community and making sure that this type of discrimination that's happening is not going to happen again. So I give you one quick example here over the COVID pandemic I was doing intakes and you know those intakes were hard because you're having people that are trying to find housing. You know the eviction notorious might be ending. They're trying to get rental assistance but their landlord doesn't accept it because we don't protect that in the state here. And so those calls were just horrific. But one will always stand out to me, and this was by a woman. She had just been laid off because of COVID. She was in the service industry, she was a single mom, she lived on the neary side here in Indianapolis and she had gotten a text message from her landlord stating that you know, if you sleep with me or you come over and what was essentially alleging sexual and intercourse, then we would forget about the rent and it would kind of all go away from there. And I just remember that story that she had because it was just, she was so vulnerable in that position. It was such a very special moment for both of us, just because we were able to kind of listen to each other and be there for each other. But we that type of discrimination is so, so horrific that we ended up collecting or connecting her with an attorney that does specialize in fair housing. They're out of California and we ourselves as an agency also got involved in that case alleging sex discrimination. So harassment is also protected under the Fair Housing Act and her news. Her story went viral. It made news over in the UK, made Buzzfeed I believe. But we were luckily able to settle that case very quickly for that client and you can learn about that on our advocacy page. Don't want to give any specifics, but yeah welcome to learn about that on our advocacy page, as well as our other cases that we have Filed and been part of as well. So those are just one of the examples, but I could go on, for. You're not a government agency, as you said, and you're Not a legal firm correct, we are not attorneys, so we we contract out when we do need some of that's.

Speaker 1: 25:11

What that's the way, do you have particular attorneys that work pretty closely with you then that that are Particularly qualified?

Speaker 2: 25:21

there are unfortunately very limited amounts of attorneys across the country that do specialize in Fair housing. So there's a really great firm in California went out in DC and then kind of smaller ones here and there, and so if Anyone is interested in kind of going that route, highly encourage it. The demand is extremely there. But yeah, the, the, the Fair Housing Specialist in the legal industry is very limited.

Speaker 1: 25:45

So when you say you get involved, I mean obviously you get involved in terms of the intake, listening, giving suggestions, giving references, whatever what else is involved, mean so our intake team does a really good job.

Speaker 2: 26:03

We will, if we need, to, go on site to visit you to learn more about your story and get documents. Whatever, we are willing to meet you wherever you are. You know, of course, staff resources and availability, but one of the other things that I think is incredibly interesting and unique to our agency is we will conduct investigations. So if you're alleging race discrimination, you get that weird gut feeling that something's just not right. You can't prove it's race discrimination. You can call our office so we can actually conduct Investigations to determine if discrimination took place or not. One of the coolest things that I love about our agency is our testing program. Our testing program is like civil rights secret shoppers. So what we will do is a client will call in and say I think that I was treated differently because I have a Hispanic accent. So what we'll do is we'll send in a tester with and a tester without Hispanic accent. See if they're treated any differently. Are they told the same terms and conditions? Is one offered a special versus not? Is One offered to move in tomorrow versus one? Is you know told nothing's gonna be available for two or three weeks? These are the very small minute ways that housing providers are smart now in ways that they discriminate. We call it discrimination with a smile, because you have no idea that you were discriminated against, right? And that is why our testing team is so critical to the work that we do.

Speaker 1: 27:31

So you have people on staff that do that work.

Speaker 3: 27:34

Yeah, our testing coordinators coordinate the tests and then we have fair housing testers, which are part-time employees that we reach out to to perform the tests for us, and so we are always recruiting new testers, and so it's a great opportunity for somebody who is looking to be a civil rights act, part of the civil rights movement, help enforce civil rights, rights and housing, but also it does provide a stipend for every test that you perform. And so what happens is our test coordinator will be like okay, we're gonna test this property. We got an allegation that they discriminate against somebody Because they are black, for example. So we'll have our testing pool and we'll have a control test and then we'll test based on that allegation. So we'll send in, for example, if we want to test the the allegation of black or American or African-American Discrimination, will send in a tester who is, for example, white or Caucasian, and then somebody who is black, mm-hmm, and they will go, you know, within a day or so of each other. They fill out this report of their entire experience and then our tester or test coordinators will analyze those reports in depth. And, as Brady was saying, you know that experience is very telling because were you greeted white right away, where you made to wait 30 minutes.

Speaker 2: 28:49

Did they give?

Speaker 3: 28:49

you tours of two or three apartments versus just one, where you told you had to have this down payment and this person wasn't told down payment at all. Do you have to do a criminal history check? Was that asked of both candidates or just one? And so it's. It's very interesting to consider that if you had just gone in by yourself, your experience is your experience. Yeah, you have nothing to compare it to, but our fair housing or test coordinators can compare that and uncover that discriminatory behavior.

Speaker 1: 29:20

I'm curious with that. Whenever you get those Calls of I suspect that this is going on and you run a test like that, what are the Outcomes of those? Usually do you usually find now there's not this going on. Or you know what? Almost always we find that the hunch was correct. What would you say?

Speaker 2: 29:44

There's not really a calculation, but I will say that there is an alarming rate that we find more discrimination than I would hope in the state of Indiana. So Can't give out specifics, but I will say that there's still an alarming rate of discrimination and is it?

Speaker 1: 30:01

is it happening in particular Protected areas or is it across the board?

Speaker 2: 30:09

It's really across the board. Yeah, I mean, we still see major trends in disability, race, gender and familial status, but it's happening to everyone, and I kind of just want to, I think, point this out. This important note is that there are national estimates that there's like 38,000 complaints filed across the country, but there are estimates that there's over four million incidents that occur every single year in the country, so less than one percent of complaints are actually being filed, and so when we tell you these this data, it might be completely different. It's probably not. But you know, people are so scared to contact a fair housing group because they don't want to be retaliated against, they don't want to lose their housing. This is the only housing that they can afford anymore. They don't know about their fair housing rights. They fear for their safety. There's just so many variables that are involved in that, and so it is extremely important that you do contact your fair housing center, because it does allow us to get out into the community and say that this is a group that's being impacted. Let's invest our resources and investigate this type of discrimination.

Speaker 3: 31:14

Well, I will say, and as Brady mentioned earlier, even if you just have like a spidey sense not to like, bring Marvel into conversation.

Speaker 1: 31:22

My grandson would appreciate.

Speaker 3: 31:24

You don't have to know that you're being discriminated against if you just, if something feels wrong or if they said something that just You're like, that just didn't feel quite right, call us. We might have had other people who have called us and we can be like oh, this seems like we've gotten quite a few that Seemed to think the same thing and we can open that investigation because, like, like we said, it's discrimination with a smile. They either and some of it, you know, is on purpose and some of it may not be, but it doesn't matter. It's still affecting access to housing for these particular groups of yes, do you charge anything for your services? Absolutely not.

Speaker 1: 31:59

No charge to anybody who contacts you know, Let me just ask the follow-up to that. Then you mentioned grants. How are you funded?

Speaker 2: 32:11

So we receive majority of our funding through the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. So they offer grants specifically for private nonprofit, for housing groups like ours. We are lucky enough to have some local funders as well, so the city of Indianapolis to their CDBG partnership. Recently we were funded through the Urban League as well, and there's probably some other people that I'm forgetting as now, but there are some other incredible local partnerships that we have to Excellent.

Speaker 1: 32:39

One of the things that we like to do is Allow our listeners To learn ways they can plug in to what you're doing. What might that look like with your organization?

Speaker 3: 32:54

Yeah, so absolutely we, we love engagement from the community. I think that what I always tell people. First and foremost even though I'm sure Brady wants me to plug the testing program I want you to call our office and report anything that you see. If it's happening to you, if it's happening to somebody else, you can report anonymously. But we want people. You don't even have to be the one who's being discriminated against?

Speaker 1: 33:16

absolutely not. That's part of your charter is to investigate, no matter what. Yes, how do people know your phone number and that you even exist? Yeah, so that's a big part of our outreach program. I.

Speaker 3: 33:31

I joined again about a year and a half ago. So we are kind of trying to expand our outreach and get out in the community more so that we can have this public facing Person that will be promoting and letting people know that we exist. We have a very active social media that we Share all kinds of housing related to housing Information that's going on locally, nationally, just housing issues across the board, so people can interact with us on there. Our website is extremely well visited. We have an amazing education page that goes through all the different protected classes and very specific issues. We have publications on there that people can access in multiple different languages in many cases, and so they can find our contact information on there if they're interested as well. But yeah, outreach is something that we're really trying to ramp up. I go to a lot of different community events. We're always willing to go and talk to different groups of people who want to learn about their fair housing rights. They can contact us, request a presentation. I have a really hard time saying no to do it, so we'll probably make it work.

Speaker 1: 34:37

But we, we want to talk about fair housing with anybody who wants to listen so, as you know this, a large part of the audience of this podcast are those who are already working within the continuum of care for the, for those who are experiencing homelessness. I just got to believe that there's needs to be, if there's not already, a strong connection Between them because they hear stories. I got to think, from what I've heard Every day of someone who's been evicted for maybe something that doesn't seem right, or Does that connection already exist? Are you looking to build that connection?

Speaker 3: 35:21

Yeah, so I don't know about before I got here, but I did speak at the continuum of care IHCDA conference last year Um on fair housing basics, so I covered all seven protected classes, um, and it was really well received. Um. And since then I've kind of been working with IHCDA a little bit on a couple of of task force committees, kind of trying to make sure that we are educating the continuum of care on fair housing rights. As you mentioned, though, the continuum of care, people are working more directly with individuals, and so it's so key to educate those individuals so that they know that these rights exist. So if someone one of their clients does come to them and they're experiencing issues they can be like, oh there's this organization that can help you. And so building that network, like educating Um individuals and empowering them to activate their civil rights, is one part of it, but even educating advocates and social workers and the people on the ground with individuals is equally important.

Speaker 1: 36:17

Based on what you said, it doesn't even have to be the person who's discriminated against to call those case. Workers could potentially give you a call.

Speaker 3: 36:26

Absolutely. We just want to know what they know.

Speaker 1: 36:29

Other ways people can get involved with your organization.

Speaker 2: 36:35

I will let Erica jump in and talk about for Housing Month celebrations that we'll be doing here. The one thing that I just want the general public to do is step outside of their house and look around at your neighbors. Does everyone look like you? Does everyone love like you? Does everyone have the same abilities as you? If that's the case for housing, it's not alive and well in your community. We want to see a diverse, thriving community where people do not look like you, do not speak like you. If there is the same demographics in your community, ask yourself why. Learn about your history. Have you always had a segregated neighborhood? Are you in a formerly red-lined neighborhood? One of the ways that we help educate people on that is through a traveling exhibit that we do on the history of sales and lending discrimination here in Indianapolis that travels once a month to random places around Central Indiana. You can learn more where it's at on our events page on our website. I think a really great way is we all have to start taking changes and steps to redressing and eliminating the harmful decades of discrimination that took place many times, often mandated by the federal government, before the Civil Rights Act was passed. We have this great tool moving forward, but it does not do anything to go back in time to stop the discrimination. Our office is very well aware of that, especially in the lending market. We are taking steps to go out and find the discrimination ourselves. We're not waiting for people to call us. We go out and look at the trends Are you only lending to black people? Are you only lending to white people? We have really great reports that analyze our top 50 performing lenders in the Marion County area. We analyze criminal history behaviors with the improvements and the interconnection with more technology in our housing industry. We have concerns that algorithms are also biased. If they're created by someone that looks like a cisgendered, straight white man, it's most likely going to produce results that look like or that favor that. There are so many ways that people can get involved and everyone at any point in their life is somehow involved in housing. If you're in your church, if you are in you, work with someone that's a real estate agent, a broker, anything like that Help them spread the message of fair housing. Just a simple conversation or sharing our website with them. Everyone knows someone that's involved in the housing industry. That's a simple way that everyone can help us further a mission.

Speaker 3: 39:17

We do offer free trainings, probably half the year. Almost every month we take a little bit of break here leading up to Fair Housing Month, but they'll start up in the summer again. They're virtual so you can attend from anywhere. Two hours for basics. We do have disability specific presentation as well for two hours and then some special topics. We love for people to attend. They're open to anybody and everybody. You do have to register. It's a great way to learn and to spread the word. If you know somebody who works in housing, like Brady said, it's a great opportunity to get that first introduction into Fair Housing if you're not familiar.

Speaker 1: 39:53

In those cases, go to your website.

Speaker 3: 39:57

Our events page will detail out our entire training schedule once we publish it for the year. It'll also tell you about any upcoming events we have. It'll tell you the location of our traveling exhibit, which, if anybody has a location that they want to host it, they can reach out to me personally. I will give you my information, Steve. We're always looking for locations. We just want it's completely localized. So it's all Indianapolis stories. It is going through the suburbs right now, which is super exciting because Indianapolis' story is the suburb story. In a lot of ways they're very interconnected and so we travel outside of Marion County with that exhibit as well. It stays the whole month and it gets a whole new audience of people. It's really exciting to get that history out there. It does go into modern day forms of discrimination as well as health impacts that we're seeing because of that discrimination. It's a great exhibit and definitely contact me if you would like to host it. We have a couple of locations but we have the rest of the year open. I'm definitely looking for new hosts if anybody is interested.

Speaker 1: 41:03

Erica Brady alluded to Fair Housing Month coming up. Yes, I wanted to give you the opportunity, what's behind that and what happens.

Speaker 3: 41:16

The Federal Fair Housing Act was passed as part of the Civil Rights Movement in 1968. It actually was a direct result of, unfortunately, the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. We celebrate April as Fair Housing Month as a result of that. Every year we at the Fair Housing Center rally our efforts a little bit extra when it comes to education and outreach. This year we have our Fair Housing Conference. We do that annually. This is our 12th conference. We're super excited about it. It's going to be on Tuesday, april 9th. It is an all-day Fair Housing Education. We have a basics track which will go through rental discrimination and all the different protected classes. We have a sales and lending track and we have a hot topics track. We have speakers from basically all over the country, hopefully National expertise yeah some of them are still confirming.

Speaker 1: 42:14

Yes.

Speaker 3: 42:15

You get expertise. That isn't just Amy and Brady and I talking to you about. Fair Housing which is what a lot of our trainings are, because we know that and we're doing that. But we're bringing in outside people to share the same information in different ways, to share their own experiences. It's really a great experience and it's virtual so people can attend. We've had tons of people from Indiana attend, but we also have some people from outside of Indiana attend. It's going to be a great experience so people can look for that on our events page. Coming soon we also will be releasing a children's book this year that we're really excited about. We've partnered with a local author which I'm not sure I'm allowed to say, so I'm not going to say her name, but we're super excited. It's a kids book. It's illustrated in the most beautiful colors that I've like. I'm just super excited about it, and it's for ages 8 to 10. And basically it's about the story of this biracial boy and his family and they're forced to move because of circumstances in their family good circumstances but moving is tough on children. It can be really scary, and so it's about you know walking through that fear and why he's scared and what he's scared of, and at the end of it it's about coming into this neighborhood that really embraces diversity. It's not just about accepting that somebody is different than you, it's embracing it fully and celebrating that diversity, and so we're really excited about that. We're really excited about having a local author write it for us and with us, and this has been a year in the making, I think. So we'll be releasing that in April, hopefully as well, so you guys can be on the lookout for that, but we do a lot of presentations throughout April and a lot of different things. So, yeah, I'm pretty excited. Brady, did I miss anything?

Speaker 2: 44:04

Yeah, I just I would add reports. So we are really happy with the reports that we put out. We produce reports by advocates for the general public, so oftentimes you'll go online and search housing reports and it's always from the lenders perspective or real estate perspective, and so we wanted to get reports and knowledge into the hands of people that are most impacted by the discrimination. So we'll be having, I think, at least four reports coming out in the next five or six months or so. So please visit our website for that as well, just because we have so many different types of topics and especially for individuals involved in the continuum of care, lots of different ways and concerning areas that might have a direct or an indirect impact on discrimination that their clients are experiencing.

Speaker 1: 44:49

So what kinds of information would be in a report?

Speaker 2: 44:53

So we will be releasing an updated report on the top 50 lenders in Marion County and who they are producing loans to. We analyze him to data and we will, you know, call the top 50 and see who's performing the best and the worst when I say best, within air quotations compared to their peers of the national average. So we'll have that report coming out. We have had some reports on out of state investors and the havoc that they're wreaking on first time home buyers, especially black and brown communities, going in and just taking any way of first time home ownership opportunities away from these people. We have had stuff on tenant screening. So the impact on evictions, the impact on the effects of individuals with incarceration records, I do want to know. Sorry, right.

Speaker 3: 45:47

I do want to know. There are some gaps in the protections that we feel at the Fair Housing Center federally. So in some states I remedied that by adding local protections, but Indiana has not. Am I allowed to say that?

Speaker 2: 45:59

Yeah, okay.

Speaker 3: 46:02

So we really see a lot of issues when it comes to criminal history and that being used against people and really being a huge barrier to people who are exiting our criminal legal system. We also see a huge problem with source of income discrimination when it comes to what it's usually called Section 8, but it's housing choice vouchers now and we technically have protections for our LGBTQ community because of an executive order and updated HUD guidance, but that's not actually an official amendment into the Fair Housing Act, so we would like to see some of those added protections. So we're not saying the Fair Housing Act as it stands, it protects everybody but, it is a very powerful tool to protect all of us in one way or another, even if there are those few little gaps we'd still like to see closed.

Speaker 1: 46:54

You guys both speak with much passion and I really appreciate that. What motivated you guys? What's your story as to how you ended up where you are?

Speaker 2: 47:07

I can share first. So I studied non-profit management with the focus in the arts in undergrad and very quickly realized that I had this passion that was just not fully satisfied by interning with arts agencies and so I really grasped onto social justice and kind of those more philanthropic efforts for a little bit out of after graduating. But personally I've always had this fire inside me because I did grow up gay in a very conservative, very Catholic focused community that was not always the most accepting, and so I have been in people's shoes that are experiencing discrimination and I can understand what they're going through, the traumas, the grievances, excuse me, and the ways that you react to those types of things, and so being able to relate to people that are going through what you are serving and who you're helping is so incredibly important. But I got into this because of the civil rights justice aspect but since being involved with this for the last 10 years, housing is everything, so you can't get away from anything without always getting back to housing and where you live. So we have incredible stats related to health and housing. So here in Indianapolis, depending on if you were born in a majority black census district versus a majority white, you might live 17 years longer if you're in the white neighborhood compared to the black neighborhood. Those statistics no one should be okay with. That's 17 years of someone's life, that you get to live longer because just because you're born. And so my passion ignites very much. So doing this work, because the inequities, while not as blatant so we're not going to rent to you because you're black that still happens, unfortunately, but it's not as common. Discrimination is getting a lot trickier to prove, but that doesn't mean it's any less more harm. Less or, excuse me, does not mean that it's more harmful as a result, even though it's not as in your face. And so evictions, this tenant, screening, criminal history, source of income, discrimination, these out of state investors, they are all in some way, shape or form adding to the discrimination that's happening and the inequities in our communities. And so once you realize how important housing is, the passion is very hard to subside right, and once you get involved with it, it's so incredibly important to realize that the work is just beginning. We went how many years and decades and centuries through slavery, and only in the last hundreds or years have we actually gotten to a point where black people are not seen as slaves, and I say that loosely to some people but we have so much work to do. we're still in the very beginning stages of actually enforcing civil rights tools and we have a long way to go, and that's why I'm really excited to continue fighting in the industry.

Speaker 3: 50:13

Does it surprise you at all that when you actually think about how long the Fair Housing Act has been around? I'm sorry, my lead asked questions when I started working here. I did not have Brady's long story to get here. Mine was completely different, which I'll share in a bit. But when I thought about the Fair Housing Act passing in 1968, that's within my parents' timeline, like that's it's crazy to me to think of that.

Speaker 1: 50:41

Yeah, it's been that long.

Speaker 3: 50:43

I think it's been that short it's been that short yeah.

Speaker 2: 50:45

Oh it's both perspectives.

Speaker 1: 50:47

Yeah, it's both perspectives we just recently did it yes. But yet it's been how many years and we're still here.

Speaker 3: 50:57

The work is just beginning it's not that long ago, which we I can't even fathom, but we're also still have all these issues and I can't tell you how many times some of the hardest things I have to do at an event is. Somebody comes out to me and they're like oh, this doesn't happen to me. And I'm looking at them. I was like I hate to break it to you, but it could be like people think that discrimination is a civil rights 1960s problem just because it's hidden, or it's more disguised now. Yeah, it's more described because we don't have the water fountains that say white and black over them, right, and that doesn't mean, like Brady said, that it's any less harmful, but it is a heck of a lot harder to uncover and prove.

Speaker 2: 51:47

I think one thing I want to say is, if you ever go to DC and you haven't been to the African American History Museum, it is so incredible because you walk through most of the floors and you work your way up and only until the very last snippet of that exhibit in that museum is where our current day is. And so to kind of shine a light on Erica's thing is look at how much history we have that's influencing how our neighborhoods are so segregated now, and only that little snippet at that last second there do you actually see the advancements that we've been making. So yeah, it's a great way to actually be physically in the timeline of how really see it right there in their face.

Speaker 1: 52:24

So the timeline yeah, erica, tell me a little bit.

Speaker 3: 52:29

So you're about to get a black and white comparison here. I actually started off and I went to school for something absolutely unrelated to what I'm doing now. I started off my first career in a very technical, very scientific, mathematical career in a for-profit business and there was nothing wrong with that. I really enjoyed it for a while and it really did tailor to a lot of my skills. But and I think this is kind of an old story now, but at the time it seemed pretty substantial is like COVID hit and we were all driven home and we're all sitting at home with nothing but ourselves to occupy our minds.

Speaker 1: 53:13

Yes.

Speaker 3: 53:14

Right, and so you're driven to like internal reflection on your life. And I was able to work from home, so I was not impacted like many others were during the pandemic, so I was fortunate in that way. But it did slow everything down, right, we weren't constantly going places, constantly busy. So you had this reflection time and I just and up until that point I had been involved in different nonprofits and housing and it had been like passion projects for me outside of work, but I hadn't done anything as a career in that in that way. So I just, I just was at home with myself thinking is this really what I want to be doing for the rest of my life, which there's nothing wrong with that but I wasn't feeling fulfilled for myself. So I was looking for a change and a couple of years later I was like ready to make that change and I was looking for organizations here in Indie that were working in this nonprofit quote unquote affordable housing, housing realm and I landed here and it has been an incredible journey and it has opened my eyes even more. I think COVID there were so many terrible things going on during COVID, but I think one of the positive things that happened was just how, in your face, the housing issues were for people, and so I think that that really helped inspire me to like make that leap, because it was not an easy decision and I am not really a risk taker. I don't think I don't do anything drastic without thinking through it, like 100 different ways.

Speaker 1: 54:53

You're scientific, exactly.

Speaker 3: 54:56

But I just decided that it you know it's now or never, I could not do it, and 20 years down the line either regret it or it might be too late or something, and I can always go back. I don't. I haven't lost any of the knowledge or skills I had before. I'm just using different ones now, but that's how I ended up here. I just kind of looked at local organizations. I loved the work that the FHCCI does. I love the reports that they issue and I love that, yes, they serve and help people who are facing housing discrimination. But Amy's really good at at pulling in all kinds of housing issues under housing discrimination because, even though it may not look on the surface like like something that is a violation of fair housing, we know that the majority of housing issues, at the end of the day, end up impacting people of color, people of low socioeconomic standing, people with disabilities and women significantly more, and so it's just it's. It's really great. I feel very lucky to be here. I'm not sure how I was chosen, to be honest, but I feel incredibly lucky and proud to be working for this organization, and I'm going to stop now because I feel like I'm getting emotional. Okay.

Speaker 1: 56:16

Well, I just want to say thank you so much to both of you for the work you're doing.

Speaker 3: 56:21

Thank you so much, Steve, for having us.

Speaker 2: 56:23

Yeah, thank you, we appreciate it.