Annual Report and Call to Action.
Your Support Matters
First and foremost, I must call attention to the grave threat that housing civil rights face in our nation today.
As 2025 began, we were reminded of just how fragile civil rights can be. Years of struggle established the Fair Housing Act. But civil rights laws quickly become meaningless without funding for enforcement.
The “Department of Government Efficiency” sought to eliminate two of our new grants. The White House then released a proposed budget that eliminates all funding for fair housing organizations like The Fair Housing Center. Read our full statement on the DOGE grant cancellations here.
In The Center’s many years of work to enforce fair housing rights, we have never encountered such a sudden, inexplicable, and spiteful opposition to our work.
As I write this letter, HUD has failed to renew funding for our largest grants.
What will our community look like without fair housing?
- No fair housing testing to uncover hidden discrimination.
- No agency to provide assistance to victims of discrimination who cannot afford attorneys.
- No investigations to uncover discrimination.
- No one to point out practices that set up barriers to fair housing choice.
- No trainings for housing providers to ensure compliance with the law.
- No events, such as Ode to the Zip Code, which help our community understand the importance of housing choice.
How You Can Help
To continue this work, we need your help more than ever. You can help The Center:
- By signing up for reoccurring giving here.
- Buying tickets to our Legacy Event on October 4 here.
- Contacting our Development Coordinator, Audrey Johnson, to sponsor an event or help in other ways at 419-243-6163 ext. 128, or ajohnson@toledofhc.org
We will always fight for our community and, with your support, I am confident we will continue to grow The Center’s mission for decades to come.
Looking back on 2024
The Fair Housing Center saw increases in complaints of housing discrimination. But at the same time, The Center received more fair housing grants than it has ever received in the history of the agency. The additional two grants were highly competitive and recognized the outstanding work of The Center. We also became a United Way partner agency for the first time, while receiving other competitive foundational grants.
Also in 2024, we partnered with the City of Toledo to help create a new Lead Resource Center to help prevent childhood lead poisoning, which will begin operations soon. Lead poisoning continues to plague historically redlined and disinvested neighborhoods.
We held our first annual Homes and Dreams event which recognizes outstanding members of our community who advance the goals of The Fair Housing Act. In 2024, awardees included:
Dr. Suzette Cowell
Mr. Robert Pasker III
Mr. Nick Komives
Mr. Noah Woods
This new event was a wonderful way to recognize and encourage others who also work in this space.
Our new housing conditions and neighborhood reinvestment program also continued to grow. This program helps tenants facing difficult housing conditions, most often in disinvested neighborhoods. We added a new staff attorney to help keep up with the significant demand for these services that no other area nonprofit provides.
In 2024, we also completed significant changes to improve our agency for years to come. For example, we transitioned from an outdated bookkeeping system to QuickBooks and have further improved our case management systems.
2025 is our 50th anniversary
While we face these immense challenges in 2025, we will not let them distract us from celebrating the 50 years of dedicated service and powerful good which The Center has provided to our communities.
Please join us on October 4, 2025 for an event to celebrate our 50th Anniversary. More information and tickets are available here.
George Thomas
CEO & General Counsel
The Fair Housing Center
America was founded on a demand for civil rights
Housing discrimination continues to harm communities and negatively impact individuals. Enforcing the Fair Housing Act is the bedrock of our advocacy, and our Enforcement team works tirelessly to protect your rights.
2024 saw continued successes in the enforcement of fair housing laws. Some of the highlights include:
- Implementation of settlement funds to help our community. The Center, with other fair housing agencies across the country, previously settled a case against Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae maintained foreclosed properties poorly in communities of color as compared to other areas in violation of the Fair Housing Act. In 2023, The Center implemented settlement funds in the Toledo area to help communities harmed by Fannie Mae’s practices. Programs included downpayment assistance, new roofs, a tiny home, and capital for contractors completing rehabs in affected areas. In 2024, we saw the successful completion of these programs.
- Continuing the fight against childhood lead poisoning. In 2024, The Center continued its advocacy to end childhood lead poisoning caused by substandard housing conditions. The Center filed an Amicus Brief in a case brought by landlords who hoped to stop Toledo’s local lead poisoning prevention law. We later saw the Court rule in favor of Toledo, ensuring that it can implement basic laws to prevent poisonings in our community. Throughout this time, The Center continued to call attention to the fact that lead poisoning is a fair housing issue as it predominantly harms historically redlined neighborhoods where deteriorated lead-based paint is prevalent.
- Increased litigation. In 2024, The Fair Housing Center continued to protect fair housing rights in federal court. This included a new case where a young man with disabilities using a wheelchair could not access his apartment, and the housing provider refused to allow him to install a door opener at his own expense. After further investigation, The Center also found that the apartment complex failed to comply with the Fair Housing Act’s design and construction standards, which require accessibility for persons with disabilities.
- Our Housing Conditions and Neighborhood Reinvestment Program saw a banner year. Throughout 2024, The Fair Housing Center continued its success with many affirmative lawsuits filed in Court challenging substandard housing conditions for tenants. This program focuses on housing conditions issues in neighborhoods that have been historically redlined and disinvested. The program has recovered more than $100,000 back to tenants who faced problems like mold, water damage, lost security deposits, and backed-up plumbing that landlords refused to resolve. No other agency in Toledo provides this much needed service.
REPORT HOUSING DISCRIMINATION HERE.
Advocacy
As a visible advocate for victims of housing discrimination, The Fair Housing Center challenges systemic causes of bias and gives those affected a more prominent voice in public policy.
Throughout 2024, The Fair Housing Center continued its longstanding expertise in local policy advocacy to further the goals of the Fair Housing Act.
- The Fair Housing Center continued its work to remove barriers to fair housing choice and build a more welcoming community through 2024. One of the most important parts of this work is creating the City of Toledo’s Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice. Every five years, The Center creates this report for the City to identify and make an action plan to remove barriers to fair housing choice. For this five year period, The Center identified the following important barriers and action steps to remove them:
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- Criminal history screening – The Center suggests development of programs that allow tenants to take advantage of the new “Certified Qualified for Housing” (CQH) process that confirms that formerly incarcerated persons can be eligible for housing.
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- Increase access to homeownership in our community – The Center makes a number of recommendations including incentives for banks to increase access to home loans through better marketing and product offerings.
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- Accessible housing for persons with disabilities – Our community must increase enforcement of state and local laws aimed at ensuring accessibility can be increased.
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- Source of income discrimination – The City of Toledo should develop systems for enforcement and implement enforcement of its local source of income discrimination laws.
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- Voucher mobility – Housing Choice Voucher recipients can experience better mobility and neighborhood choice with their vouchers if Lucas Metro Housing adopts certain best practices for voucher mobility.
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- Zoning and Land Use – The City of Toledo must change its zoning code to better welcome housing for persons with disabilities including group homes, and adopt zoning standards that increase access to fresh healthy foods rather than unhealthy food options that are prevalent in historically redlined areas.
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- Homelessness and Affordable Housing – The City of Toledo must prioritize development of new affordable housing opportunities, especially housing with added services for chronically and long-term homeless persons.
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- Local laws that slow or eliminate access to housing services – The City must also review its local laws and process that may cause delays or eliminate access to housing services for low-income families or in historically disinvested neighborhoods.
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- Substandard housing conditions – Housing conditions remain one of the most prevalent concerns in our community, and the City should implement programs to improve housing conditions.
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- Public transportation can be critical for housing opportunities – Now that the local transit authority has expanded to a county-wide model, it should study whether its services are reaching persons with disabilities and racial minorities or if these services should be improved, such as through county-wide paratransit.
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- Access to water services – Losing access to water most often means a loss of housing opportunities. Since the City locally controls the terms and conditions for water access, its policies can powerfully impact the community, especially the most vulnerable residents. The City should work to improve access to water services through various policy and practice changes.
- The Center helped with completion of a new documentary, called “Shoot This Not That.” This youth-centered initiative uses photography, storytelling, and media arts as tools for healing, expression, and advocacy, particularly for young people impacted by gun violence. Through the program, participants document their experiences and reimagine safer, stronger communities. This program also connected these issues with the history of redlining and fair housing to the geography of concentrated poverty and civil rights.
Financials
$0.80 of every dollar is spent DIRECTLY on programs.
Your tax-deductible contributions to The Fair Housing Center help us fight housing discrimination.
DONATE NOW
Our impact by the numbers.
2100
Complainants Assisted
133
Investigations Conducted
189
Individuals With Disabilities Assisted
6,795
Persons Directly Impacted by Our Services
100,000+
New Total Funds Recovered for Tenants Facing Substandard Housing Conditions
11,957,700
Advertising & Outreach Impressions
19,714
Educational Materials Distributed
31
Trainings Conducted
584
Individuals Trained
97
Community Partnerships
For the tenth year in a row, The Fair Housing Center, The Arts Commission, Toledo Lucas County Public Library, Toledo City Paper, and Toledo Area Parent partnered to host Ode to the ZIP Code. The annual free poetry competition invites Toledo area residents to submit short poems inspired by their ZIP Codes, where the number of words in each line of the poem is determined by the corresponding digit in their ZIP Code. For our 10th anniversary, we saw more than 600 submissions, a new record.
This year’s winners are listed here.
YOUTH
(Ages 11 and under)
1st Place
THEO DECKER
4 dogs in the distance
3 cars driving by
6 snow falling down on the ground
1 calmness
6 so much in a simple neighborhood
2nd Place
RAE KANIA
4 I once did not
3 know that my
6 neighborhood was weird and weirder then
1 Hillandale
4 why I don’t know
3rd Place
KYLIE STOUT
4 in my living room
3 the magic happens
5 ballet, lyrical, tap, and jazz
6 I love dancing day and night
6 love to be in the spotlight
YOUNG ADULT
(Ages 12 through 17)
1st Place
JORDAN HARRIS
4 I was told to
3 leave my mark
6 wherever I went, so I etched
0 (my salutations to home in the concrete)
7 next to the seed I grew from
2nd Place
SOPHIA PLOEGER
4 Fraying Rust Belt avenues
3 calico swirls of
6 steel flakes, stained glass, mossy brick,
0 (vacancy, yet homeward scents of toasted cinnamon coast from)
4 pothos lined espresso shops.
3rd Place
AKOSUA BRENYA
4 the roars of construction
3 pounding, thudding, collapsing
5 but the trees give you
6 solace within the slithers of silence
0 *
ADULT
(Ages 18 and older)
1st Place
JENNIFER ZUNK
4 Confederate flags, Trump flags
8 neighbors drinking lies, barbecuing democracy, and proclaiming superiority
1 * sighs*
2 don’t ask, don’t tell
8 I miss my Blue city
2nd Place
BARB GAIL
4 Shawn’s, Caper’s, Distillery, Doc’s
3 Neighbors meeting here
6 Friendly faces at all these places
1 Yes!
4 let’s have a beer!
3rd Place
JENAI HICKLIN
4 an area of trees
3 fields, streets, playgrounds
6 out far but yet so close
1 skies
5 I feel safe, I think
2024 DONORS
Thanks to our generous donors, The Fair Housing Center can provide the education, advocacy, and enforcement needed to prevent housing discrimination. Together we are creating inclusive communities of opportunity.
GOLD
$10,000 - $19,999
Westfield Insurance Foundation
SILVER
$5,000 - $9,999
KeyBank Foundation
BRONZE
$2,500 - $4,999
Eileen Stanbery
COPPER
$1,000 - $2,499
Toledo Neighborhoods Together
University of Toledo College of Law Student Bar Association
CHAMPION OF FAIR HOUSING
$500 - $999
David Baum
Disalle Realty
Patty O’Toole
Spengler Nathanson
Patty Wise
Alan Sattler
George Thomas
Mathew Smith
FAIR HOUSING ADVOCATE
$100 - $499
Amy Saylor
Linda Skowronek
Tony Totty
Paypal Giving Fund
Tom Luettke
Candace Buckley
First Church of God
Faye Smith
Mary-Thom Williams
Gloria Smith
Cherie Sears
Alan Sattler
Christina Rodriguez
Rob Pasker
Christi Morino
Tom Kroma
Juanita Greene
Ashleigh Smith
Hambuger Mary’s
Cheryl Slack
Kathe Merrit
Patricia Rob & David Arnold
Norma King
Tony Gallagher
Francis Frey
FRIENDS OF FAIR HOUSING
Up to $99
Fionne Wright
Katherine Thomas
Madelyne Stiegler
Delise Simmons
Debbie Riley-Jackson
Delisa Moore
John Meeks
Staci McDaniel
Adrian Lime
Amber Lewis
LuCynthia Jones
Renee Hawkins
Andre Green II
Patricia Ellis
Kimberly Dixon
Camille Thomas
Logyn Taylor-Thompson
John Meeks
Nina Corder
Loreen Banks
John Emmert
Simone Spruce
Holly Eichner
Charmaine Brown
John Meeks
Jacqueline Banks
Sean Nestor
Jupmode
Habitat for Humanity
Donald Perryman
Jesse Lipson
Dylan Hawkins
