National Community Housing Resource Board Conference, September 28- October 1, 1982

摘要

This report describes major issues associated with HUD's voluntary compliance program to achieve fair housing and is based on an independent contractor's monitoring of the 1982 National Community Housing Resources Board (CHRB) Conference. The CHRB is a major element in HUD's efforts to provide program implementation assistance to local housing industry groups that have signed Voluntary Affirmative Marketing Agreements (VAMA). An introduction outlines the CHRB's history and funding, the conference's organization, and the monitoring methodology. The next section summarizes Conference discussions which centered on six topics -- CHRB operations and organization, patterns of cooperation, training and technical assistance, funding, CHRB effectiveness, and problems. In general, CHRBs vary widely in innovative activities, practices, organization, and membership. A key factor to program success is recruiting effective people, notably members of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers and fair housing organizations. Although 40 percent of the real estate boards nationwide have signed VAMAs, many realtors are still reluctant to sign, citing client objections and excessive paperwork. Participants favored increased technical assistance in helping new CHRBs get organized, particularly in explaining funding methods, monitoring techniques, and fair housing legislation. While insufficient data exists for a full - scale evaluation, conference discussions indicated that CHRBs had changed attitudes of real estate firms, community organizations, businesses, and local governments and increased community awareness of housing discrimination. Topics for future research on CHRBs are identified. The appendices contain summaries of the conference sessions and a consultant's paper on measuring effectiveness.