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Fort Wayne, Ind. – Pulitzer Prize winner Dr. Matthew Desmond led the keynote address for 2022 Fair Housing Summit, hosted by the City of Fort Wayne’s Metropolitan Human Relations Commission and the Office of Housing & Neighborhood Services.

Desmond’s best seller Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City has effectively changed the understanding of inequity and economic exploitation in America. Desmond is the founder and Principal Investigator of Princeton’s Eviction Lab.

The lab was launched in 2017 following conversations with renters and policymakers in an effort to answer questions about residential instability, forced moves, and poverty in America.

In 2018, the organization published the first-ever national dataset of evictions in America, collecting millions of data points going back to 2000.

“This event is so important to us because we know how imperative it is for us to equip our community advocates, housing providers, realtors, elected officials, and citizens with the tools and knowledge to address fair housing in our community,” said Nikki Quintana, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Human Relations Commission.  

“We know that housing choice allows families build social capital and connections that lead to better opportunities,” said Kelly Lundberg, Deputy Director of the Office of Housing and Neighborhood Services. “That is why events that focus on fair housing are so important.”

More than 350 people registered for the event, which was held Wednesday April 27th at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum Conference Center. Attendees had the opportunity to hear from fair housing experts during various workshops. The topics of these workshops include:

  • Fair Housing Disability Legal Update;
  • Lending Discrimination;
  • Criminal History as a Fair Housing Issue;
  • Blight to Bright – Transforming Neighborhood “Liabilities” into Community Assets;
  • Housing Displacement; and
  • Housing and the Racial Wealth Gap.

Sponsors for this event include: Premier Bank, Upstar Upstate Alliance of Realtors, 1st Source Bank and Lake City Bank.