Celebrate April,

The Fair Housing Month

By Dottie Evans

Certain things have come to be taken for granted in this country, such as the right of all American citizens to full and equal housing opportunities in the neighborhood of their choice.

But it does not hurt to take time out once a year to remind each other of how important and how hard won that particular right is. And April is the month that proponents of the Fair Housing law have chosen for that purpose.

Every year at this time, according to Elizabeth Stocker, director of community development for the Town of Newtown, the Board of Selectmen puts out a proclamation recognizing Fair Housing Month. Letters are sent to realtors, banks, and lenders to ask if they are holding any specific public education projects and to be sure they are cognizant of the Fair Housing law as it stands.

Ms Stocker calls it an awareness check.

This year’s proclamation was signed by the three selectmen, First Selectman Herb Rosenthal, Joseph Bojnowski, and William Brimmer, Jr, and it was dated March 17, 2003.

“I am the designated fair housing liaison,” said Ms Stocker.

“If someone felt that they were being discriminated against, they would call me and file a complaint, which I would then send on to the state Fair Housing Office.”

So far, Ms Stocker said she has never had a specific complaint in the town of Newtown regarding issues of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, marital status, age, mental or physical disability, lawful source of income, sexual orientation, or familial status –– all the areas covered under the law.

In the old days, however, before the Civil Rights Act of 1968, there had been the practice of “red-lining,” which she said meant that certain buyers were steered by realtors toward homogeneous communities or towns.

“Sometimes the reason was the realtors knew their clients might not get bank loans for housing in certain other areas, so they didn’t show them those houses,” she said.

It was an unfortunate, unspoken reality and it needed to be addressed. Now such methods are considered not only discriminatory, but they are illegal, according to Ms Stocker.