The more things change”… well, you know the second half of that old adage. And in many cases it’s true. Sadly, sometimes it’s truest when we look at our progress in civil rights and fair housing. Next year, 2004, marks the 50^th Anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education, which called for the desegregation of our schools. And yet, a half a century after Brown, our public schools are in the midst of dramatic resegregation, shutting down opportunities for children of color who are often forced to learn in under-funded schools with inadequate facilities and poorly trained teachers. The recent Supreme Court decisions in the University of Michigan cases upheld the value of affirmative action in higher education – just barely. Those decisions – or, more accurately, the decision on the Law School’s admissions policy – won’t survive another challenge if Justice Sandra Day O’Connor retires.

The same goes for one of America’s other serious problems, which is the continued persistence of racial segregation. In five years we will celebrate another civil rights milestone, the 40^th Anniversary of the Fair Housing Act. One of the principal goals of the Fair Housing Act was to promote stable racial integration. And yet, segregation is still alive and well in the United States, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest. In the Philadelphia region, for example, nearly 80 out of every 100 people would have to pick up and move in order to achieve an even distribution of Whites and people of color across the nine counties which comprise the Philadelphia region.

Segregation is more than simply morally wrong. The opportunity structure in our nation, which includes good education, high paying jobs, access to capital, and wealth creation, is organized to reward people who live in white suburbs. People of color pay an enormous economic price for segregation. David Rusk has noted that African American people pay an 18% “segregation tax” because their homes are more frequently located in all-minority neighborhoods where there is less market competition for homes for sale. Because our homes represent our largest asset, home value is the single most important ingredient in wealth creation. Over generations, this loss of home value has escalating consequences: Dalton Conley has estimated that the net worth of African Americans is on average seven times lower than that of whites.

Some things are changing dramatically in America, however, including our demographics. We are an increasingly diverse nation, characterized by a large and growing Latino population, the addition of new Americans from every country in the world, and a leap in intermarriage rates which results in a veritable rainbow of bi-racial and multi-racial children. Many new Americans move directly to the suburbs, bypassing the traditional stop in central cities, resulting in a welcome move away from the “vanilla” suburbs of the past.

As Whites lose their majority status, as they already have in many places in the West and Southwest, and as

we continue to welcome immigrants from all over the world, we will have an unprecedented opportunity to create the world’s first large multi-racial, multi-ethnic nation. We have a historic opportunity to create a just society, too, if we meet our demographic changes creatively and with a commitment to inclusiveness.

To meet these challenges, Fund for an OPEN Society (OPEN) is changing, too. OPEN is America’s only national not-for-profit organization whose mission is to promote thriving racially and ethnically integrated communities. You might remember OPEN as the organization which gave below-market-rate mortgages to people moving to neighborhoods where their race was underrepresented, and you might remember our dynamic and idiosyncratic co-founder Morris Milgram. Morris haled from the Philadelphia region and was a housing developer here, and older civil rights activists will have clear memories of Morris’ passionate promotion of racial integration and his effectiveness as a fundraiser for the cause. OPEN’s other co-founder, Jim Farmer, is better known as the founder of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and was one of the most outstanding and well-known leaders from the heyday of the civil rights era.

In the last few years, OPEN’s board and staff members have recommitted ourselves to our mission of promoting racial integration while dramatically changing the ways in which we go about fulfilling that mission. Through a strategic planning process, we have committed ourselves to two strategies:

· Creating a more fertile environment for inclusive communities by promoting a deepened understanding of the benefits of racial integration and opportunities for creating and sustaining integration, and by seeking to communicate those benefits as widely as possible;

· Building capacity at the community level by working directly to provide expertise and technical assistance to communities seeking to become stable and integrated, by sharing information about promising practices, and by creating a national network of communities invested in stable inclusiveness.

Communities which are undergoing racial and ethnic change can present special challenges for existing and emerging leadership. Often, community leaders want their neighborhoods and communities to be inclusive, to achieve stable integration. But they don’t know how to make it happen. At OPEN, we have the experience and expertise to help communities do the work of creating inclusive communities. We have been working with some communities in New Jersey for the past several years, including Pennsauken which borders Camden, and would welcome the opportunity to work with Philadelphia’s suburbs.

FHCSP is pleased to announce that it was recently awarded a grant from the Delaware County Office of Housing & Community Development (OHCD) under their Year 2003 Community Development Block Grant Program (CDBG). This funding will be used to continue FHCSP’s education and outreach programs in Delaware County. This funding has given FHCSP the means to publish a newsletter entitled Delaware County Fair Housing News. This is a technical newsletter that is distributed to more than 1,700 landlords, Realtors, elected and appointed government officials, and other housing professionals in Delaware County. This newsletter has been referred to as the “most important source of fair housing news in the county.” This funding has also given us the means to facilitate the Delaware County Fair Housing Task Force. This task force is comprised of non-profit housing advocates as well as housing providers, mortgage, and insurance professionals. This task force has been a place where fair housing concerns can be voiced and strategic solutions discussed amongst all concerned individuals. The funding also helps us continue the dozens of workshops and seminars that we hold every year for consumers and industry professionals regarding their fair housing rights and responsibilities.