Birdhouse auction raises money for CNY Fair Housing

By Sarah Hall

Editor

Fair housing isn’t just for the birds — but that doesn’t mean birdhouses can’t help humans get fair housing.

CNY Fair Housing will hold its fifth annual Birdhouses for Fair Housing Auction from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday, March 31, at the Community Folk Art Center, 805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse. The event invites donors, famous or not, to build and offer up birdhouses to be auctioned off.

“We have some really great artists that do some amazing work,” said CNY Fair Housing Assistant Director Karen Schroeder. “We’ve had bejeweled houses. We’ve had birdhouses in gourds. We’ve had knitted birdhouses. Found object birdhouses. We had the Parthenon one year. This year, someone’s dropping off one that’s eight feet tall. I can’t wait to see how that works. It’s a fun little event.”

Proceeds from the auction benefit CNY Fair Housing, an enforcement agency responsible for enforcing state and federal fair housing laws. The independent nonprofit, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, covers eight counties in Central and Northern New York: Onondaga, Cayuga, Tompkins, Oswego, Madison, Oneida, Jefferson and St. Lawrence. Still more counties have asked the agency to add them to the list.

“There’s a huge gap in terms of private fair housing coverage,” said Sally Santangelo, executive director of CNY Fair Housing. “We’re the only fair housing agency between Rochester and Westchester. If someone has a complaint, they can file it with the state Division of Human Rights, but that’s not going to get tested. There’s not going to be testing for that complaint. There’s not going to be advocacy for someone with a disability who needs an accommodation.”

Schroder noted many people also think housing discrimination is a thing of the past.

“We actually had an elected official one say, ‘There’s still a need for that?’” she said. “It’s so entrenched that people don’t even notice it in a way. It’s just always been that way. It’s difficult, the enforcement activities. We talk about how things have gotten so subtle these days. It’s not the sign on the window that says, ‘No blacks’ and ‘No Mexicans.’ It’s subtle. It’s the lost application. It’s the dragging your feet. It’s the, ‘That apartment just got rented,’ or the application gets lost.”

CNY Fair Housing responds to complaints of discrimination based on race, age, disability and more, filing suits on the behalf of victims. They can ask that the victim be allowed to rent the apartment, remain in an apartment if they’re facing eviction or request monetary damages.

If a landlord or property owner is suspected of discriminatory practices on a regular basis, CNY Fair Housing will send in a housing tester, someone who works for the agency posing as a prospective tenant to see if the landlord is discriminating against certain people or groups. The agency is looking for housing testers; to sign up, go to hcnyfairhousing.org/get-involved/become-a-housing-tester/

The agency also provides outreach and education to landlords in hopes of preventing them from discriminating against tenants and prospective tenants.

“Sometimes they just don’t know better, or they don’t know what to tell their clients, or they don’t know what to tell their tenants,” Schroeder said. “We give them the benefit of the doubt and hopefully arm them with some knowledge that they can take on their own and think about.”

Some funding for the organization comes from the municipalities it serves, but most is in the form of grants from the federal government.

“The majority of our funding comes from the Department of Housing and Urban Development,” Santangelo said. “It’s a Fair Housing Initiatives program grant. That’s about three quarters of our funding. We’ve been fortunate to have had the grant.”

However, those grants are highly competitive; Central New York isn’t guaranteed funding. Santangelo said there have been years the agency has gone unfunded.

“If we don’t get funded we basically have to cut just about all the staff. It’s very difficult to go through,” she said. “Hopefully you get funded again the next year and you can rebuild.”

That’s why fundraisers like Birdhouses for Fair Housing are not just helpful; they’re necessary.

“It’s a supplement,” Schroeder said.

As it is, the agency runs with just six employees, only three of whom are full-time. Those employees cover all eight counties in CNY Fair Housing’s coverage area.

“There’s still more need,” Santangelo said. “We may still add a couple more counties. But the staff doesn’t necessarily get bigger. It doesn’t necessarily mean more funding when we add more surface area. A lot of the grants we get are a set amount.”

Birdhouses for Fair Housing Auction from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday, March 31, at the Community Folk Art Center, 805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door, and can be obtained at eventbrite.com/e/5th-annual-bird-houses-for-fair-housing-auction-reception-tickets-21733924754.

For more information about CNY Fair Housing, visit cnyfairhousing.org.