Fair Housing / Lending News

             The Chicano Housing Authority (CHA) has paid out $8.5 million to Professional People for the Public Interest (BPI) in legal fees over the course of 51 years. BPI represented a group of low income Chicago public housing residents. The firm has been locked in litigation with CHA for over 51 years, the longest running housing discrimination lawsuit in American history. The case began in 1966 accusing the CHA of racial discrimination and segregation of housing for public housing recipients.              The “Gautreaux Case”, which was initiated to fight racial discrimination, in the form of segregation, and the CHA systemic practices of having low-income black residents concentrated in high-rise public housing buildings, for the purpose of preventing them from being able to move to more diverse and opportunity rich neighborhoods. This litigation was never intended to end in a payout for the discriminated residents, but to change the landscape of the CHA itself. The c

A recent report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) found that in North Carolina, Orange and Durham counties have the highest rates of filed housing discrimination complaints. In the past five years, disability and racial discrimination accounted for 47.6% and 32.4% of all housing discrimination complaints, respectively.             Although this may sound like an extreme issue with the community, Jeffrey Dillman and Jack Holtzman, the co-directors of the Fair Housing Project, note that the reason for these percentages could be because the residents of those counties are more aware of their rights compared to residents from other counties. Holtzman noted that the Fair Housing Project believes that those from different counties “may not be as educated about their housing rights or outlets to report discrimination.” He went on to highlight that there are a substantial percentage of individuals throughout North Carolina that do not know how to file housin