While our upcoming Fit for a King Fair Housing Summit is our 12th annual Fit for a King, GNOFHAC has been hosting fair housing summits for much longer. Before we began hosting Fit for a King in January to honor Dr. Martin Luther King and his influence on the passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, GNOFHAC hosted summits each April during Fair Housing Month.

While digging through our archives, we came across this GNOFHAC newsletter from 1997, which featured the 2nd annual summit with the theme of “Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing: What are the Barriers to an Open Community?”.  Speakers from the 1997 summit included representatives from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Richmond (Virginia), and the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond.

GNOFHAC’s scope and services have grown since our establishment in 1995, but as we approach yet another Fair Housing summit, the questions raised in 1997 are as relevant as ever. We’ve made significant progress fighting housing discrimination and segregation, but we also face new and worsening challenges including a growing affordability and displacement crisis, a rollback of commitments to Fair Housing at the federal level, and increasing threats from climate change. We hope you’ll join us this year to continue the fight for Fair Housing. Fit for a King is free and open to the public but please register here so we know to expect you. Learn more and help spread the word on our Facebook and summit website.