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Fair Housing Law Internship Program for Undergrads Offered at John Marshall Law

Summary: John Marshall Law School will start offering a new course for undergraduates regarding fair housing and fair lending laws.

Starting this fall, John Marshall Law School will be offering a special course for undergraduates seeking to learn more about fair housing and fair lending laws. The law school’s Fair Housing Legal Support Center is armed with an Education and Outreach Initiative grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to educate undergrads in a course that can go towards their degree, according to report from EIN Newsdesk.

The grant will provide scholarships for students to take the course that can count towards their undergraduate degree. The Center hopes to properly educate the students and future advocates on how to fight discrimination still existing in housing today and how to educate others about fair-housing laws.

The Center ran the program during the current Spring 2018 semester by selecting 26 students from Concordia University Chicago, DePaul University School for New Learning, Dominican University, Elmhurst College, Harold Washington College, Illinois Institute for Technology, Johnson and Wales University, Lewis University, McGill University, North Central College, Northeastern Illinois University, Robert Morris University, Roosevelt University, Triton College, University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The participating students are required to help the Center staff make presentations at local schools, community groups and senior organizations. The presentations they give are made to educate other students, professors and community members about housing rights. The program also gives the students opportunities to build their public speaking skills.

By the end of the course, the Fair Housing Legal Support Center hosts a career night for program students and alumni. There they can explore job and career opportunities in fair housing and civil rights. Some of the previous panelists of the career night include representatives of U.S. department of HUD Region V FHEO Office, Access Living, Illinois Department of Human Rights, HOPE Fair Housing Center, Chicago Commission on Human Relations, The University of Illinois at Chicago-Department of Urban Planning and Development, The John Marshall Law School Fair Housing Legal Clinic, and the law firm of Gartner & Bondavalli. The Center will help students interested in these organizations or others promoting fair housing to secure an internship.

Do you think fair housing is an issue in many places or strictly to the bigger metropolitan areas? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

To learn more about fair housing and fair lending, read these articles:

Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

Amanda Griffin: