Introduction
The Howard University School of Law Fair Housing Clinic is committed to aggressive, proactive advocacy and community empowerment by serving as a legal clinic on fair housing issues and as a housing rights resource center. Our primary focus is fair housing enforcement and education, but our clinic is concerned with housing issues in general and will attempt to, at all times, to serve the community with innovative and broad based solutions to everyday housing problems. Community residents will be able to rely on the Clinic to educate themselves on fair housing matters and basic housing law and rights, seek counsel when rights have been abridged, learn how to react to housing problems and fair housing violations, and bring their new-found knowledge back into their community. The Fair Housing Clinic will stand as a model of best practices to ameliorate fair housing issues, affordable housing concerns, and social inequality.
The Fair Housing Clinic works to educate both students and residents. Where the students learn about fair housing law, investigation of potential violations, civil trial strategy, and client representation, the community residents learn essentials of their rights and remedies. The Clinic makes outreach initiatives by preparing and making available fair housing education brochures, seminars, and presentations for residential and community organizations. The Clinic stands as a resource to anyone seeking fair housing information or assistance.
Student facilitated, the Clinic allows students to expand their knowledge of the fair housing laws while enhancing their advocacy and trial skills with client contact. The clients represented by the students are community residents who either walk into the resource center or are referred to the Clinic from a community organization that has created a partnership with the Clinic.
Drawing on its partnerships with the Department of Housing and Urban Development as well as other private and public organizations committed to eliminating discriminatory housing practices, the Fair Housing Clinic shares knowledge and resources. The partnerships with these organizations serve as a means for the Clinic and the students to stay aware of the diverse needs of the community and fair housing trends.
From the work with the community organizations, the students get an understanding of what type of policy improvements are needed to help the community. The students participate in developing and analyzing the current and future fair housing policies. As a group, the students engage in in-depth analysis of the current fair housing policies and practices in order to develop new approaches to combating housing discrimination.
Recognizing the multitude of issues inherent in fair housing and its far-reaching scope as a human rights issue, the Fair Housing Clinic will continue to grow and adapt, adopting a new approach to fair housing law to stay congruent with changing societal needs.
Notably, although Charles Hamilton Houston aimed his legal weapons at segregation and discrimination in education as his strategic plan, Houston’s vision inspired and led to forays against housing, zoning, and employment discrimination as well as discrimination in the judicial system and law enforcement. In fact, it was Houston and his star pupil Thurgood Marshall who were key legal players in the fight to destroy racial covenants in housing in the 1940’s in the United States.
Their efforts culminated in the successful U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Shelly v. Kraemer and the lesser known case of Hurd v. Dodge decided the same day as Shelly. Included amongst the counsel in these cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court were William Henry Hastie and James Nabrit Jr., distinguished legal minds associated with the Howard University School of Law.
In July 1945, Marshall, then special counsel to the NAACP, convened a two-day conference whose purpose was to continue its efforts to attack the growing menace of racial covenants in housing. In 1947, as the Shelly case made its way towards the U.S. Supreme Court for review, Marshall convened a second conference on racial covenants at Howard University. Marshall was counsel in a similar case from Michigan. Marshall’s efforts and the efforts of some many other attorneys paid huge dividends in the end.
“We hold that in granting judicial enforcement of the restrictive agreements in these cases, the States have denied petitioners the equal protection of the laws…” the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in 1948 in Shelly. The famous decision where the Court ruled that state enforcement of racial covenants in individual housing was a violation of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was the beginning of the modern struggle to eradicate racial discrimination in housing in the United States.
At all times, the Fair Housing Clinic at the Howard University School of Law, shall seek to continue in that tradition of social justice.