April is National Fair Housing Month and as the month comes to an in depth, it is crucial that we reflect on the work that continues to be to ensure fair housing for . This is much more vital as we proceed to take a look at a worsening housing and homelessness crisis that disproportionately affects people of color, families with children, women, individuals with disabilities and other members of protected classes. To truly deliver on the promise of fair housing, we must make equitable, long-overdue investments in housing and community development.

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act on April 11, 1968, only one week after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The country was still scuffling with this incalculable loss. Just two years earlier, Dr. King had founded the Chicago Freedom Movement to fight housing and economic inequality. It was this movement activity that led to the passage and subsequent passage of the Fair Housing Act.

The Fair Housing Act, as amended, prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), national origin, religion, disability and familial status. Unfortunately, as a nation, because we’ve failed to fully fund and implement this law, systemic and blatant discrimination and inequality proceed to plague every aspect of American life.

The passage of the Fair Housing Act also got here after President Johnson famously created the law Kerner Commission examining the dynamics of the race riots that broke out across the country in 1967. The commission’s report confirmed that housing discrimination and institutionalized racism create racial tensions and contribute to the creation of “two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal.” The commission made several key recommendations on housing, including significantly increasing the supply of inexpensive housing for low-income families and opening up access to white neighborhoods for people of all races, something we’ve not yet achieved. It is not any wonder that persistent housing discrimination and unequal community development remain the cause of many racial and economic injustices in America.

Over the years, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and native fair organizations received housing record levels housing discrimination complaints reported every year, including greater than 33,000 in 2022 alone. But we all know that discrimination is woefully underestimated. At least in 2018 1 in 4 peopleor 68 million, felt they were treated in a different way when searching for housing because of their status as a member of a protected class under the Fair Housing Act.

Other barriers, e.g redlining, exclusion zone and land use ordinances proceed to prevent members of protected classes from accessing decent housing. It’s the same in lots of communities across the country more segregated today than in 1990, further widening racial and ethnic gaps in poverty, wealth and residential ownership. Actually, Black and Latino renters are twice as likely to be evicted compared to white tenants they usually are overrepresented amongst the homeless population. Our nation also faces widening racial wealth and homeownership gaps, with the average net value of homeowners – who’re more likely to be white – being 40 times greater than that of renters. Meanwhile, in the case of disabled people, the possibilities of integration and housing availability are severely limited, including: data showing that lower than 1% of U.S. homes are wheelchair accessible and only 5% are accessible to individuals with moderate disabilities. We even saw it some local governments proceed to use federal housing and community funds in discriminatory ways in which violate the Fair Housing Act.

While the Fair Housing Act has undoubtedly expanded housing and economic opportunities for tens of millions of families across the United States, President Johnson said it best himself: “We’ve come some way, not almost all of it. There is still a lot to do.” That’s why I proceed to work closely with my colleagues in the House to fight for historic investments that can make this goal a reality. While Democrats secured greater than $20 million in fair housing enforcement investments through the American Rescue Plan Act, rather more is required.

Last 12 months, I reintroduced my historic housing package to proceed our efforts, including the Housing Crisis Response Act, the Ending Homelessness Act, and the Home Equity Downpayment Act. Together, these bills represent the largest and most comprehensive investment in fair and inexpensive housing in U.S. history. I call on our nation’s leaders to work with me to help address the urgent need to end the U.S. housing crisis and fulfill the promise of fair housing for all.

On April 25, the voting rights group Souls to the Polls called for the removal of recently appointed Republican Party of Wisconsin executive director Andrew Iverson over concerns that he was conspiring to overwhelm the group with requests for Donald Trump supporters to take to the polls.

According to reports, text messages was created when Iverson was the leader of the Wisconsin chapter of Trump Victory, a three way partnership between the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee. Souls to the Polls Wisconsin State Executive Director Greg Lewis said in a press release that the messages were the most recent in a line of racist voter suppression.

“Today’s news is the latest example of voter suppression and racism,” Lewis said. Samuel Libert, Wisconsin director of All Voting is Local, and Angela Lang, executive director of Black Leaders Organizing Communities, joined in condemning Iverson and your complete Wisconsin Republican Party.

“This egregious ‘wreak havoc’ tactic not only undermines democracy, but also directly targets minority communities and perpetuates our cycle of voter suppression,” Lieber said. In the press release of April 25 this yr. he directly emphasized these points. “By targeting a Black community organization like Souls to the Polls, there is no doubt that the ultimate goal was Black voter suppression. “This threat to flood them with access to an election program that Milwaukeeans have relied on for over a decade would deprive voters of key access measures who actually need help getting to the polls.”

Lieber continued: “Such actions not only undermine our democracy, but also directly target historically disenfranchised communities and intentionally make it more difficult for them to vote.”

Meanwhile, Lang was critical of Iverson’s argument that the text messages he exchanged with former Republican operative and white supremacist Carlton Huffman were jokes. Huffman, who agrees with Lang and Lieber, is now an anti-Trump conservative.

“For communities of color to say that this is an injustice and a painful part of my ancestors’ history, then again, politics aside, why would you joke about something like that?” Lang said. “And then after all we add politics, we add different dynamics, the present political climate that we’re in – it’s all disgusting to listen to that he thought it was a joke and I felt prefer it was a lame excuse when he was attempting to turn back the clock a bit of bit .

A black mother plans to file a $40 million lawsuit against the city of Yonkers after her 13-year-old daughter was attacked at college by a gaggle of oldsters who began a fight between the girl and one among their relatives, also a student, leading to a harrowing brawl, which has since gone viral on social media.

Days after the fight, Alenna Merritt stated that she had removed the child from Yonkers Montessori Academy and filed legal documents notifying the city of the impending lawsuit, maintaining that the school was negligent and inadequately supervising students, which could have prevented the melee .

The Legal Notice of Claim, delivered to the City of Yonkers on April 25, provides formal notice of the lawsuit before it’s filed against the city agency.

Merritt’s grievance alleges negligent supervision, negligent hiring, negligent infliction of emotional distress and other related allegations against Yonkers, the Yonkers Board of Education and Yonkers Montessori Academy.

This wasn’t Merritt’s first negative experience with the academy, after she filed a lawsuit in January alleging school staff sexually harassed her daughter by asking her to remove her bra and shake her breasts, suspecting she was concealing a vape.

Four months later, the harassment case remains to be pending.

Merritt said that when the fight involving her daughter broke out in mid-April, she thought, “Here we go again.”

“We have children who are not supervised and not protected.” Merritt said New York Post Office. “I’m not going to put her in danger and throw her into the lion’s den every day.”

The 42-year-old Yonkers mother also said she plans to file criminal and potential civil charges against the adults involved while the incident stays under police investigation.

After reviewing cellphone videos, investigators determined that a few of the adults also attacked Merritt’s daughter, leading to an arrest warrant for Nancy Rosa, 55, who was allegedly one among the parents who got here to the school on April 18 to beat the underage girl, police said .

She faces charges of third-degree assault, second-degree molestation and endangering the welfare of a baby.

The Yonkers Police Department has not said whether more arrests are planned.

The fight scene was so brutal that police were called to the school to crush Donnybrook.

The girl who was targeted, a minor identified only by her initials EW, said at the least five adult relatives jumped on her when one other girl chased her on the baseball field of the Montessori school for elementary and middle school students just before classes began.

According to reports, one among the attackers is the grandfather of the other student.

“I felt confused and scared — they kept screaming in my face,” the teenager told The New York Post during an interview with the family’s lawyer. “When I was attacked, I felt alone and scared because there was no one to help me.”

One particular video of the incident circulating on Platform X shows Merritt’s daughter being assaulted by a much larger girl who overwhelms the EW with a series of untamed, excessive-force blows to the head.

According to the claim, a gaggle of adults got here to the school looking for a fight and intended to find EW’s friend, but since that person wasn’t there, they turned their anger at EW as an alternative, Merritt’s lawyer, Mark Shirian, explained.

Shirian questioned whether the school’s security staff intentionally selected not to move in during the fight as a type of retaliation against Merritt for her other outstanding claim against the school.

He said Merritt and her daughter had been “traumatized by this ordeal” and urged the school to take “decisive action to rectify this situation and prevent such occurrences in the future.”

Shirian accused Montessori of “gross failure to ensure student safety,” calling it “totally unacceptable.”

In the recording, parents may be heard screaming and cursing at EW, before one other student suddenly attacks, punching EW repeatedly, while adults encourage the hitting and EW tries to defend herself by punching her in the back.

According to the initial legal filing, EW “was left unattended” and “violently attacked on the grounds of Yonkers Montessori Academy by students, parents and relatives of current students during school hours.”

The document states that the teenager “was brutally attacked and beaten, as a result of which he suffered serious physical, emotional and mental injuries.”

Merritt said she was “horrified” when she received a call around 7:30 a.m. from her daughter, crying that she had been beaten by a gaggle of offended parents moments earlier.

Merritt’s daughter is now participating in distance learning and can receive help from a tutor for the remainder of the school yr.

Merritt stated that she had no plans to return EW to school, fearing for her safety, and revealed that the girl had already been accepted into a non-public Catholic all-girls school, where she would attend school next yr.