Housing justice starts here: UIC’s fair housing course
x
Fair housing–the ability to live anywhere one wants without facing prejudice–is a crucial and pressing issue in today’s world, including for students. However, segregation and housing discrimination remain issues in Chicago, even with one of the strictest fair housing legislations in the nation. The fair housing/fair lending course, facilitated by the UIC School of Law, assists students in understanding how these problems appear in real-life scenarios, particularly in a diverse city like Chicago.
According to a 2019 research study conducted by the Chicago Commission on Human Relations and the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, 43% of 70 fair housing tests indicated discrimination on the basis of race, wealth or both. Many groups are impacted by this reality, including college students looking for off-campus housing who might experience prejudice due to their race or financial circumstances.
Held on Monday evenings, this 13-week course provides an extensive curriculum that covers topics such as fair housing investigations, examination processes, zoning and lending practices and the development of fair housing law.
“We start out with slavery and carry on through the Jim Crow years, what led to the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968 and then cover the Fair Housing Act very extensively—not only race and national origin, but sex discrimination, disability discrimination, etc.,” explained Michael Seng, director of the UIC Fair Housing Legal Support Center & Clinic and professor of law.
In the 1990s, the John Marshall Law School established the Fair Housing Center at UIC with federal funding in order to raise public awareness of fair housing. The UIC Fair Housing Legal Support Center & Clinic was established in 1993 after the law school and UIC merged by professors F. Wills Caruso and Michael Seng to provide legal representation to victims of housing discrimination.
Every semester, roughly 15 to 20 students from a variety of academic fields sign up for the fair housing/fair lending course. All students in the city, including those from community and city colleges as well as UIC, are eligible to enroll in the course. Students from all academic backgrounds, especially those with an interest in architecture and urban planning, are encouraged to join.
Throughout the course, students receive practical experience through carrying out fair housing investigations. In order to determine whether landlords or property managers treat applicants differently based on race, disability or income source, they pair people with similar financial histories but distinct protected characteristics to ask about the same housing opportunity, allowing students to collect evidence of discrimination and prejudice.
Through a capstone project, students can hone their advocacy and public speaking skills while developing and delivering presentations on fair housing laws to their communities and schools. The course is intended to be more than just theoretical; it provides students with the information, abilities and self-assurance they need to become changemakers.
“We’ve had a number of students who want to go into the real estate or banking industries–where they will navigate loans, insurance and mortgage lending–all of that type of thing is covered by the Fair Housing Act. So we really want students to be familiar with that,” said Seng.
In addition to coursework, students are able to connect with professionals in the field at a career night that includes representatives from the Illinois Department of Human Rights and other housing equity-focused community organizations.
Given Chicago’s lengthy history of redlining and segregation, which still affects access to opportunities and resources, it is vital to recognize how housing discrimination has influenced communities for decades and continues that influence today.
“I think it’s important that students understand lending practices and are aware that those things can have long-term implications when they rent or buy a home,” Seng added.
For more details, including application deadlines, please visit UIC’s Fair Housing Course website.