The empty halls of Moore Counseling and Mediation in Euclid mirrored the empty chairs stationed around a projector screen that was flickering with a prepared slideshow on its screen.
The April 29 presentation curated by Tanesha Seaborn, the director of education and Outreach for the Fair Housing Center for Rights & Research, was going to teach attendees about the different ways that landlords and other homeowners might discriminate against them and different unfair housing practices that might not be as commonly known.
“We hold these events to ensure that the community knows about their fair housing rights,” Seaborn said. “We estimate that about 30,000 incidents of housing discrimination occur in Northeast Ohio annually but a lot of it goes unreported because folks don’t know their rights, or they might even fear retaliation from housing providers if they do choose to expose that.
“We want to make sure that people understand their housing rights and know that they can have a resource to get some remedies from their housing providers and also file an administrative complaint if they have to.”
Seaborn said that the empty room was likely because people that are facing immediate housing needs are often too busy trying to find a place to live to come to these types of seminars. But they have options after the fact that they should know about.
“A lot of times when people are facing discrimination, their first thought isn’t usually to file an administrative complaint,” Seaborn said. “Because it’s housing, they are more thinking ‘hey I need to go find somewhere to lay my head’ rather than these nuances of filing a complaint and whatnot…
“I think we are in a time, right now, where there is a lot going on. In our country, in Northeast Ohio, as far as people losing jobs and being worried about a lot of different things, I think that may be on their radar,” she added. “But one of the things that we want to make sure people know that even if you don’t file a complaint at the moment, people typically have up to a year.
“So, if they were harmed, they can always come back to us in filing a complaint if they did experience discrimination.”
For the past 18 years, the Fair Housing Center for Rights & Research has released a State of Fair Housing in Northeast Ohio report that uses a number of methods to track discriminatory housing practices.
One of the methods includes sending in “secret shoppers” who follow up on complaints after someone reports a possible violation. If for instance someone claimed that they were told an apartment wasn’t for rent, despite seeing an ad for it, the secret shopper will go in and see if the landlord will rent to them.
According to the 2024 report, the number of incidents of housing discrimination and segregation continue to rise in Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, and Medina counties with the pandemic increasing the disparity.
“For the third consecutive year, the number of fair housing complaints filed in Northeast Ohio grew, increasing by 20.7% between 2022 and 2023,” the 2024 report states. “Segregation, redlining, and persistent forms of racialized wealth inequality continue to contribute to financial, health, educational, and other socio-economic disparities between people of color and their white counterparts in Northeast Ohio.
“The lasting financial, economic, socio-emotional, and health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated these disparities and shaped housing outcomes in the region.”
According to the report, 89 fair housing complaints were filled with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2023 from the six counties they looked at data for. Disability discrimination was the highest recorded, followed by racial discrimination, and familial status.
According to Seaborn, one of the reasons why disability discrimination is so common is because it can be visible. Accommodations have to be provided, — either denied or charged a fee to have by landlords.
“That’s typically because it’s very easily identifiable, we typically see it in the form of someone being denied a reasonable accommodation or a reasonable accommodation to their disability,” Seaborn said. “If someone has an emotional support animal, and a housing provider has a no-pet policy, them denying them their emotional support animal… even trying to charge them for an emotional support animal is actually a violation of the fair housing law.”
She said that even if someone has a disability, which is being made worse by an issue in their housing which isn’t being fixed, then that can fall under a discriminatory housing practice.
“…If someone has COPD or asthma and there are cockroaches, that can exacerbate respiratory issues – a person can ask for a reasonable accommodation request to have that issue fixed so it’s not exacerbating their disability,” Seaborn said. “We often see housing providers kind of ignore that or not pay attention to it so that’s why we come in and advocate for folks.”
How they go about advocating can go several different ways.
Besides conducting research locally, they will contact a housing provider when they first receive a complaint to see if they can mediate the situation. If that fails, they figure out what the appropriate agency, like the Ohio Civil Rights Commission or HUD is that can potentially intervene and go from there.
“That’s why we hold these types of events, to make sure that people understand we are a resource in the community” Seaborn said. “They can always give us a call, our services are free- we are available, we’re here.”
More information on what unfair housing practices can look like, and how to file a complaint if unfair housing practices are being carried out, can be found by calling the Fair Housing Center for Rights & Research at 216-361-9240 or online at thehousingcenter.org