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By Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana
Every April, the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana (FHCCI) celebrates National Fair Housing Month to commemorate the passage of the Fair Housing Act back in 1968, exactly 7 days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Many believe the fair housing act was passed as a direct result and is his legacy. To learn more about the importance of ensuring equal housing opportunity through the elimination of housing discrimination, check out this short video.
As it stands today, the Federal Fair Housing Act makes it unlawful to discriminate in housing transactions based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, or familial status (the presences of children). To promote fair housing education throughout the month of April, FHCCI has created a recommended reading list for adults! There are a wide variety of options to choose from, so check out the annotations to find the one that best suits you and happy reading.
Be sure to tag us on any posts of you reading these picks! You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
Evicted
Matthew Desmond
Paperback
$20.00
$18.60
Matthew Desmond's first book - an eye-opening account of the eviction crisis, through the eyes of real tenants, housing providers, and more in the Milwaukee area.
Maid
Stephanie Land,
Barbara Ehrenreich
Paperback
$18.99
$17.66
A memoir that tells the tumultuous story of one low-income, single mother's journey of trying to provide for her daughter while working as a maid and struggling to get by day-to-day. This is a great read to understand the struggle of navigating various forms of government assistance and the unfair treatment and stigmatization associated with receiving welfare. This story does deeply demonstrates and provides insights into poverty in America - its social, psychological, and cultural aspects.
The Lines Between Us
Lawrence Lanahan
Hardback
$28.99
A story of two individual's journeys - a white man and a black mother - masterfully illustrates the deep disparities between their access to safe, affordable housing, quality jobs, educational opportunities, and more. Through these personal depictions, the author illustrates how the community became so highly segregated and and reflects on how those lines/divides persist today.
Homewreckers
Aaron Glantz
Paperback
$17.99
$16.73
Recommended for anyone interested in learning how Wall Street’s plunder of our communities stripped Americans from the dream of homeownership, and still affects us today. Ever wonder how in the wake of the 2007 foreclosure crisis banks and financiers made billions while poor and minority communities were left for foreclosure? Glantz shows how the American tax payer paid real estate tycoons to stockpile our affordable housing stock and extract the wealth from our most vulnerable populations.
The Big Short
Michael Lewis
Paperback
$16.95
$15.76
In the book, the author walks the reader through the otherwise non-understandable Wall Street transactions related to mortgage securities. He details how Wall Street was the prime contributor to the foreclosure crisis of the mid 2000s by causing the rapid expansion of the predatory lending market. The fair housing implications are evident throughout the book in how black and brown communities were targeted with subprime loans built for the homeowner to fail. If you are not a book reader, the movie does an excellent job summarizing the book in its 2 hours of screen time adding in levity and real world examples.
The Monster
Michael W. Hudson
Paperback
$25.99
$24.17
Written like a mystery thriller and who-done-it, this book goes back in time and takes an in-depth look at the start of today’s predatory lending housing market and the persons who built the industry. It documents how regular homeowners were defrauded and schemed into predatory products, often resulting in foreclosure, under the guise of helping the underserved. With a cast of characters out of a Hollywood movie, this book is a good read for those wanting to better understand the underbelly of today’s housing and lending markets and the fair housing impacts of such.
The Color of Law
Richard Rothstein
Paperback
$17.95
$16.69
A fair housing book list wouldn't be complete without this classic. This is a heavy-read and not for the faint of heart, but incredibly revealing about how and why we are seeing the housing issues we have today still lingering around from the 1960s and earlier.
Poverty, by America
Matthew Desmond
Paperback
$30.00
$27.90
Matthew Desmond's newest book asks the question "Why is there so much poverty in a country of such affluence?". And he delivers with a deep-dive into the policies and numbers that create poverty so that the rest of us can flourish.
The Address Book
Deirdre Mask
Paperback
$20.00
$18.60
While not a deep dive specifically into housing injustice, this book traverses history and the world to understand the purpose of addresses and street names - where they originated and what they can mean. Told through compelling stories of interesting people and exotic places, this book illustrates the power that street names have in a community - to hide, to decide who counts and where investments are made, and more. The flipside of not having an address is also investigated, highlighting the challenges of getting access to basic resources without an address and some creative, potential solutions that could benefit transient or homeless populations. This one also has a local shout out to the Martin Luther King Jr St in Indianapolis and the amazing work of Flanner House!