Starting on Thursday, July 22, the High Point Human Relations Commission will host a series of housing security workshops that are meant to “evaluate the feasibility of the City of High Point becoming a Fair Housing Assistance Program.”
Like many other workshops and meetings in the past year and four months, this new series of will be conducted via Zoom.
Fair Housing Assistance Programs – which fall under the oversight of the federal Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity – implement federally equivalent fair housing laws that are meant to help protect people from discrimination when they rent or buy a home, get a mortgage or apply for housing assistance. The programs also offer access to fair housing resources.
There will be a lot of diverse participants offering input at the four workshops – including realtors, landlords and local leaders. The discussion is ultimately meant to produce recommendations to the High Point City Council.
High Point’s Human Relations Commission has been investigating concerns that a failure to have local fair housing programs creates inequitable barriers for residents.
Currently, High Point residents who believe they’ve been discriminated against in regard to housing can submit a complaint to the NC Human Relations Commission in Raleigh.
All four workshops start at 5:30 p.m. and are open, virtually, to anyone.
Each workshop will look at a different aspect of fair housing:
- Thursday, July 22 – Overview of Fair Housing Assistance Program operations and certification process
- Thursday, July 29 – History of fair housing in High Point
- Tuesday, Aug. 3 – Legal aspects of fair housing
- Tuesday, Aug. 10 – Panel discussion of the fair housing investigative process
Interested residents are encouraged to participate by registering at www.HighPointNc.gov/VirtualPublicMeeting. Archived recordings will be available on the city’s YouTube channel.
For more information, people can contact Human Relations Manager Rase McCray at 336-883-3124 or rase.mccray@highpointnc.gov.
