Housing Discrimination Testing Program

To learn more about assistance animals, follow this Link to the HUD Assistance Animal informational page.

Check out our documentary Roxbury. Located in the heart of Boston, Roxbury is a diverse and vibrant community whose longtime residents have struggled to rise above decades of discriminatory housing policies. The documentary, Roxbury, is an intimate exploration of these struggles and residents’ efforts to claim agency in a shared vision of a better future that reflects a larger struggle facing communities across the country.

Housing discrimination hurts communities. Denying individuals and families the opportunity to choose where to live based on factors such as race, disability, gender identity or membership in other protected classes means unequal access to health care, educational and economic opportunities, and many other important quality of life matters. Every qualified renter has the right to be fairly considered for tenancy and not denied opportunity because of an illegal discriminatory reason.

Suffolk Law's Housing Discrimination Testing Program (HDTP) is proud to be funded by grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, MA. Department of Housing and Community Development, and a partnership with the City of Boston's Office of Fair Housing & Equity to eliminate housing discrimination in the Boston metro area through testing, enforcement, education, and research.

The HDTP is:

• Conducting housing discrimination tests
• Handling enforcement cases with students in the Accelerator Practice and referring cases for enforcement elsewhere
• Conducting empirical studies of trends in housing discrimination
• Providing important evidence where individuals suspect they have been victims of discrimination
• Educating the community about their rights and responsibilities in the rental housing market, and
• Educating the next generation of civil rights lawyers.