Fairfax County Fair Housing Benchmark Project

In December 2023, CSSR was tasked by Fairfax County Office of Human Rights and Equity Programs to identify a set of best practices from other jurisdictions’ fair housing efforts to successfully reduce fair housing barriers and promote fair housing choice.

CSSR researchers met with stakeholders from Fairfax county government and community organizations involved in fair housing work to identify those jurisdictions and identify interview priorities and questions.

We conducted interviews with Fair Housing practitioners from the jurisdictions identified by unity stakeholders. A second source of benchmark data is from Systematic Review of 15 Analysis of Impediments (AI) Reports collected from the HUD website. AI report selection was based on list of jurisdictions identified in stakeholder meetings.

Four key commitments of jurisdictions’ efforts to reduce barriers to fair housing and promote fair housing choice were identified: 1. Promote Regional Cross-sector Collaboration, 2. Build Robust Community Participation, 3. Integrate systems-level thinking, and 4. Correct for past discrimination in housing using a racial equity lens. These commitments should be operationalized within five key areas of fair housing planning: Governance and Organizational Structure, Monitoring & Data Integration of Trends and Impediments, Complaints and Assessment Processes, Fair Housing Interventions and Programs, And Dissemination and Reporting.

Research findings were presented at Fairfax County’s Annual Fair Housing Summit, April 25, 2024, which can be accessed at https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/humanrights/housing-discrimination.

To see the slide deck presented by the George Mason team at the Fairfax County’s Annual Fair Housing Summit, April 25, 2024, please click here or entering the following link in your browser. https://d101vc9winf8ln.cloudfront.net/documents/50365/original/FAIRFA_1.PDF?1724448923