Groups warn cuts will drastically reduce capacity to represent tenants, homebuyers
By LILY CAREY
Medill Illinois News Bureau
news@capitolnewsillinois.com
CHICAGO — John Petruszak opened his email Feb. 27 to find a message he called “shocking”: the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development had rescinded two grants it had awarded to his advocacy organization, the South Suburban Housing Center.
The grants, which represent 37% of the center’s budget, hadn’t been rescinded through any misstep by the organization. Rather, at the order of the Trump administration’s newly established Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the grant was being terminated because it “no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities,” the letter read.
The message came as a surprise to Petruszak, the center’s executive director. Fair housing organizations like his offer legal services and support to anyone facing discrimination in the housing market on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, familial status or disability, receiving hundreds of complaints each year. In 2023, private fair housing nonprofits across the country handled over 75% of all housing discrimination complaints.
“Fair housing is really a fundamental right,” Petruszak said. “It’s a check and balance on the housing market, just like democracy is a check and balance on our governing systems.”
But a drastic reduction in these organizations’ capacity or a mass shuttering of fair housing nonprofits could leave renters and prospective homebuyers with fewer avenues for justice if they face discrimination from landlords, real estate agents or neighbors.
Petruszak said the South Suburban Housing Center will have to cut its housing enforcement team down from five full-time staffers to one or fewer. The Homewood-based organization typically investigates up to 250 complaints each year but won’t be able to keep up with this demand after these cuts are made, he said.
Since 1987, the federal government has helped fund private organizations that investigate cases of housing discrimination through its Fair Housing Initiatives Program, or FHIP.
The South Suburban Housing Center is one of at least 60 fair housing groups nationwide, including at least four in Illinois, that saw their FHIP grant funding suddenly pulled last month. The organizations represent about half of all of the fair housing grant recipients. Advocates said they heard from the National Fair Housing Association that some organizations saw all of their grants terminated, while others saw only partial cancellations.
The groups all received the exact same message, which consisted of about three sentences and provided little detail other than attributing the grant rollback to President Donald Trump’s executive order establishing the Department of Government Efficiency.
In response, four fair housing groups, backed by the National Fair Housing Alliance and law firm Relman Colmax, sued HUD and DOGE in Massachusetts’ federal court on Thursday. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of all of the groups that had their grants terminated, alleged the government’s decision to rescind the grants was unlawful, and noted the funding had already been authorized by Congress.
In a statement provided to Capitol News Illinois, a HUD spokesperson said that “the Department is responsible for ensuring our grantees and contractors are in compliance with the President’s Executive Orders,” citing only the Trump order that established DOGE.
“If we determine they are not in compliance, then we are required to take action,” the spokesperson said in an email. “The Department will continue to serve the American people, including those [who] are facing housing discrimination or eviction.”
Dominic Voz, director of fair housing for the Evanston-based fair housing nonprofit Open Communities, said the cancellations “felt like an attack on civil rights in housing.”
“All of our work is about justice, and it’s not about one group, it’s for everybody,” Voz said. “We're on the side of the law, so we are not a political group.”
The 1968 Fair Housing Act outlawed discrimination in any housing-related transactions. According to HUD, the law also requires that “all federal programs relating to housing and urban development be administered in a manner that affirmatively furthers fair housing.”
“This is something that has continued for decades upon decades, including under the last Trump administration,” said Emily Coffey, director of equitable development and housing for the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. “It's shocking, at this stage, that the administration would sidestep the longstanding bipartisan appropriation of this funding.”
The lack of federal grant funding, which many fair housing groups have depended on for over 30 years, could be an “existential threat” for advocates and renters alike, Voz said. The Chicago area has a well-documented history of redlining, the practice of withholding financial services or loans from people who live in neighborhoods with higher numbers of racial minorities.
While the south suburbs, where Petruszak’s work is based, were once heavily redlined, shifts to affordable housing policies in Chicago led many Black residents to move to the area from the city in the late 20th century. That history continues to impact the area’s housing market today, making fair housing work “essential,” Petruszak said.
“There’s a great deal of historical documentation of discriminatory practices in the housing market that led to the south suburbs changing from a predominantly white area in the 1970s and 80s, to a predominantly Black area by 2000,” he said. “It’s an area where monitoring for discrimination in housing is most crucial, because of the historical nature of this discrimination.”
Though the federal grants to the South Suburban Housing Center represent more than a third of its overall budget, they funded 92% of its housing enforcement and education programs annually. The two grants that were terminated amounted to $550,000 combined.
Open Communities’ canceled grants amounted to 25% of its annual budget, according to Voz. The group, based in the northern suburbs of Cook County, dedicates these resources to investigating landlords accused of discrimination and filing human rights complaints. One of its lawsuits, filed in the U.S. District Court of Northern Illinois in 2023 helped prevent landlords from using artificial intelligence to reject rental applications.
The Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights saw a three-year grant rescinded two years into its implementation, Coffey said. The grant comprised approximately 15% of the group’s annual budget. The group focuses primarily on filing lawsuits in federal courts, pursuing “high impact” cases related to large housing providers or local governments, Coffey said.
In Illinois, the Human Rights Act, passed in 1979, prohibits discrimination in housing and real estate against the same seven federally protected classes. The Illinois Department of Human Rights also helps intervene in instances of housing discrimination. However, IDHR has struggled to keep up with the number of discrimination cases it has received over the past two years.
A 2022 expansion to the Illinois Human Rights Act added source of income as a class protected against housing discrimination. When this expansion took effect in 2023, IDHR began to see a “steady increase” in complaints, according to agency spokesperson Addie Shrodes.
It can sometimes take a few months for IDHR to address complaints when they’re filed, Shrodes said. But she said the department is also adding new staff to its fair housing division next week and is hoping to support private fair housing organizations in any way possible.
Petruszak said it’s the responsibility of the state government to step up and assist fair housing groups impacted by funding losses.
“We’re not talking about a great deal of money — to the government, the FHIP grant is like a grain of sand in the Saharan desert,” he said.
For Coffey, though, it seems unlikely that the state would be able to fill the gap created by the federal government’s decision to rescind these grants.
“The state budgetary landscape is just as decimated by what's happening at the federal level,” Coffey said. “But without having access to lawyers to be able to push forward claims of housing discrimination, this discrimination is allowed to go unchallenged.”
Lily Carey is a graduate student in journalism with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, and a fellow in its Medill Illinois News Bureau working in partnership with Capitol News Illinois.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
