HOLYOKE — Fair housing is fair living.
This is the motto of Whitney Demetrius, director of the newly formed Massachusetts Office of Fair Housing, who echoes the words of Lee Porter, a fair housing advocate known as the “mother of fair housing.”
Demetrius is bringing this sentiment to 12 different regions across the commonwealth in a series of listening sessions, including one held last Wednesday, Jan. 14, at Holyoke Community College. The sessions are designed to give feedback to the experts at the new state office whose mission is to advance fair housing across the state.
“Housing is not just about policy,” Demetrius said. “It’s about really keeping people first as our work, and thinking about what that means in terms of building trust in community, building access and building dignity.”
The 30 western Massachusetts residents who attended the listening session at the Kittredge Center expressed a need to improve the amount and quality of housing units, create more tenant protections and give more resources to local property owners and people on the ground already doing the work.
“All the solutions are underfunded, and all the people with the (housing) resources, like the landlords and the developers, have all the funding in the world,” said Earl Miller, director of community supports at the Wildflower Alliance, a Springfield nonprofit that offers a wide array of peer supports for vulnerable individuals. “Some of those people involved are one check away from not having housing themselves.”
Created in 2024 by the Healey-Driscoll administration’s Affordable Homes Act, the Office of Fair Housing is part of the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities. The legislation also created a Fair Housing Trust Fund, which currently holds $1 million for housing projects.
The charge of the new office is to examine ways to increase access to housing regardless of one’s race, religion, economic income, familial status or other protected class. The office does this through enforcement, testing, outreach and education, as well as collaboration on fair housing with other state agencies.
After completing all 12 listening sessions, the Office of Fair Housing will unveil its goals on April 11, the anniversary of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Last week’s session was the fourth so far, and was held in partnership with Massachusetts Fair Housing Center, Community Legal Aid, and Western Massachusetts Network to End Homelessness.
Regional legal challenges
Housing discrimination cases in western Massachusetts vary across the board, but legal service nonprofit Community Legal Aid sees two specific types of cases the most, Senior Supervising Attorney Gabriel Gonseca said.
The first type involves quid pro quo sexual harassment, where a landlord takes advantage of a tenant’s late payments by suggesting eviction could be avoided with sexual favors. The second type is refusal to accept Section 8 vouchers, which is federal money to help low-income families afford housing in the private market by paying a portion of their rent directly to landlords.
While it is illegal to turn away a potential tenant based on whether they receive public benefits, Gonseca said some landlords often blatantly tell applicants, either verbally or in writing, that they do not accept vouchers. In the greater Boston area, 86% of section 8 voucher holders faced discrimination, according to a 2020 Suffolk University Law School study.
“When you think about like someone with a voucher having to contact so many more places in order to find something,” Maureen St. Cyr, executive director for MA Fair Housing Center, “And potentially losing their voucher after waiting over a decade to get it to begin with, that work means so much to those of us who work in these offices that help people with vouchers.”
St. Cyr explains that the current fair housing enforcement system in the state has three arms: the Attorney General’s Office enforces fair housing laws, legal advocates represent and amplify voices of tenants and the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) investigates discrimination complaints. In March of 2025,WBUR reported that MCAD lost $1.3 million in federal funding, which St. Cyr credits to Massachusetts’ stricter fair housing protections.
The pullback of investment in fair housing does not only take place at the federal level. Miller points to municipalities that partner with developers unwilling to fill the existing need for affordable housing. Stefany Garcia, director of homeless coordinator at Holyoke Public Schools, said efforts to create a tenants rights education position at City Hall failed due to lack of City Council support.
“Even though there are some agencies intended to enforce, they are often slow and inconsequential,” said Katie Talbot, organizing coordinator for Springfield No One Leaves. “They are processing the concerns, but people need housing (now).”
Accessibility of housing, or limited units, remains a key challenge in fair housing. Garcia recalls losing her community when she suddenly gained income and no longer qualified for an affordable unit, and wants to see more mixed-income units.
“We do need more affordable housing, but we don’t just need it here in Holyoke,” she said. “We need it across communities so everything is balanced.”
The units on the market often have major structural, pest or utility issues. Court Navigator with domestic violence service nonprofit Alianza Brenda Sanchez said one of her elderly clients pays $600 for a section 8 unit that is rotted out. She’s had several single mother clients live in mice-invested apartments where the landlord refused to pay for an exterminator. When the mice eventually bit the tenant’s child, the mother was blamed for the landlord’s neglect.
While sagencies can always get audited and landlords sued, Sanchez said organizations like Way Finders and state programs like Residential Assistance for Families in Transition need to step up and support the community, or “it all collapses.”
Accessibility also means building more homes, which are in short supply in western Massachusetts, according to a first-of-its-kind study released last fall that compiles data from the region’s four counties.
Building community
Many attendees said the quickest way to support fair housing is allocating more resources to community organizations already doing the work. Miller helps operate the Wildflower Alliance Bowen Resource Center in Springfield, which offers many of the resources people need to find housing. But the nonprofit only has funding to open for four hours a day, five days a week. Sanchez adds that many families trust local organizations more than a state agency in Boston.
“They want to be able to see somebody, connect with somebody, get support from somebody, especially families that are not fluent in English,” she said.
This is not the first time state officials have visited from Boston to listen to residents, but Miller said the conversation often ends there. If the state really wants to support fair housing, he said, it will require consistent communication.
“Many of you all in this room advocated for this very office,” Demetrius said. “So I want to thank you for that and for certainly the partnership. You’ll hear me say that often, because I know how we do this well, how we get in this fight and how we stay in it is by working together collaboratively.”
