Cities and counties show support of Fair Housing

April marked Fair Housing Month. And every April, SPAAR encourages the cities and counties within its service area to adopt SPAAR’s Fair Housing Month Proclamation, to reaffirm their support for Fair Housing and the Fair Housing Act.

The purpose of the Fair Housing Act is to prevent discrimination in housing and to reverse segregation in housing. Although the law has gone a long way toward reaching its goals since its adoption nearly 60 years ago, the goals have yet to be fully realized.

SPAAR’s is grateful to the following cities and counties that reaffirmed their support for Fair Housing by adopting SPAAR’s Fair Housing Month Proclamation in April 2025.

The cities are Burnsville, Farmington, New Brighton, Oakdale and St. Paul joined by Goodhue and Sherburne Counties.

While great progress has been made, here's a look at some facts and figures over the years that shows the strides as well as areas where work is still needed:

• There were more than 34,000 complaints in 2023 filed for housing discrimination, a continued and unfortunate upward trend over the past few years. According to findings in the 2024 Fair Housing Trends Report “there was a noticeably steep increase in the number of harassment complaints, particularly harassment based on color or race, which skyrocketed by 470 percent and 115 percent respectively.”
• A 2021 study conducted by the University of California at Berkeley shows that “racial residential segregation is both more widespread than is generally understood and more harmful” and additionally that “more than 80 percent of major metropolitan areas in the United States were more segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990.”
• Closer to home, a 2021 Minnesota Housing report shows the state is not immune to these nationwide trends. While Minnesota has the third highest homeownership rate in the country, it also has the fourth largest disparity between White households and Black, Indigenous and households of color when it comes to homeownership.

These results highlight that there is much work to be done to achieve the goals outlined by the Fair Housing Act, which is why continued attention and education is crucial.

Although Fair Housing is spotlighted every April, it’s an important focus all year. Click here to read more about Fair Housing.