Starting at around noon (eastern) on Sunday, June 7th and continuing through noon on Tuesday, June 9th, we'll be live blogging from the National Fair Housing Alliance's annual conference. This year's conference, entitled "Fair Housing in the 21st Century: Realizing a More Perfect Union" (link to agenda, .pdf) is taking place at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill.

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Editor's note: Last night Relman & Dane sponsored a fantastic reception for conference attendees, and I promised at the end of yesterday's post to note any highlights. Matthew Dietz told me about the below video of HUD's fair housing mascot, Franklin the Fair Housing Fox. Amazing.

9:15am - NFHA's Shanna Smith opens the morning telling the story of the passage of the Fair Housing Act and the role that Sens. Mondale and Brooke played in its passage. NFHA is honoring Henry Cisneros and Jack Kemp (whose son Jimmy Kemp is in attendance to accept the award) with the Walter F. Mondale and Edward W. Brooke Fair Housing Award for their chairmanship of the National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity during the summer of 2008. This is only the second time the award has been given in NFHA's 20 year history. 

9:18am - Smith turns the mic over to the Leadership Conference on Civil Right's Wade Henderson, who pays tribute to Kemp. He calls Kemp a "gusty, rolling quarterback" for the cause of civil rights and notes that he believed in "family, faith, fairness, and football."

Wade Henderson, LCCR

9:25am - Jimmy Kemp accepts the award and opens by saying, "My dad went into politics because he did believe in ideas, but you have to remember he had about 15 concussions in football." Kemp notes that his father's "passion was passion", and that he threw himself into anything he tried.

9:33am - Smith is back at the podium and tells a story of when she first moved to Washington D.C. and didn't know much about politics. She met then HUD Secretary Kemp shortly after moving here, and recalls commenting to her friends that she was surprised President Bush had appointed a democrat to run HUD.

9:34am - Smith pays tribute to Henry Cisneros, noting that he was not only an outstanding HUD Secretary and a 4-term mayor of San Antonio but also the first Latino mayor in the US.

9:36am - Cisneros accepts the award and thanks Smith, Henderson, and NFHA before recognizing HUD Asst. Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity John Trasvina, who is in the audience. He then tells of how Kemp insisted on introducing him during his 1992 confirmation hearing, telling Senators that Cisneros was "born" to be a HUD secretary.

9:43am - Recalling the two books that he and Kemp collaborated on, Cisneros tells about trying to figure out what a bi-partisan housing policy in the US might look like.

9:47am - Cisneros explains that housing is four walls and it is a huge financial investment, but more than either it is something "transcendant." He notes that he can't think of something more important that a lay person can do than helping families answer the question of where they will lay their head at night. He, like many in the room, believes that housing is an enormous determinant for many families and that it must be fairly available.

9:54am - "Fair housing is an absolutely critical part of this country's housing equation."

Jimmy Kemp, Henry Cisneros, NFHA staff, and NCFHEO staffers

10:34am - After a break NFHA board chair Jim McCarthy introduces John Trasvina, the new Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity at HUD, who will speak first as part of the panel "Fair Housing in the 21st Century: Public Private Partnerships to Achieve Fair Housing." The other panelists are Bryan Greene of HUD and Steven Rosenbaum of the Civil Rights Unit of the Department of Justice.

10:41am - Trasvina: "We must protect the right... to be able to reside freely and peacefully in this nation."

HUD Asst. Secretary John Trasvina at NFHA '09

10:43am - Trasvina jokes that those on twitter are likely saying one of two things: yes this is great but show us some results, or this is his first major speech since being confirmed and give him some time. He thanks those who tweeted the latter.

10:47am - Trasvina announces that later this week key HUD documents will be translated into 12 languages and made available on their website, and that they are conducting an analysis of language issues throughout HUD. He also jokes that "as a government agency, we could probably use improvement of our communications in English" and promises to set high expectations and provide training to improve customer service. Specifically, he says there will be improved processes for reconsideration of cases and expanded Secretary-initiated charges.

10:49am - Trasvina: "We must not permit the Internet to be a place where people can go to avoid the Fair Housing Act."

10:58am - An advocate from the Austin Tenants Council asks Trasvina what HUD is using to determine whether an ad violates the FHA and aks him to elaborate on the reconsideration process improvements. Trasvina punts on the ad issue to Greene but on reconsideration says that the timing must be more transparent and notes they're looking to other agencies like the EEOC. He says it will be announced very shortly and that he can't go into additional details now. Greene says on ad language that they have heard about this issue from a number of folks and that they are taking another look at them. There are some very common phrases that folks are complaining about and he promises another look.

11:01am - Prof. Schwemm asks if HUD would issue a regulation about disparate impact cases under the Fair Housing Act. Trasvina says that it is on the agenda and to watch for more information later this year.

11:11am - Trasvina jokes that we've been so "battered down for, oh, I don't know, the last 8 years" that we need to remind ourselves that we can again collaborate. "It is our time to get alot done."

11:15am - Trasvina gets a standing ovation, then Jim McCarthy introduces Rosenbaum and Greene. Rosenbaum opens by saying that when he walks into work each day there are two pictures he sees, one of the first African American president and one of the first African American attorney general. He also notes that when AG Holder went to each of the departments at DOJ, he specifically told the Civil Rights Unit that he wants a rejuvenated and expanded civil rights enforcement team to be his legacy at DOJ.

11:21am - Rosenbaum: "There has been insufficient attention given to the lawyer side of the state and local equivalents." He urges folks to keep DOJ in mind even if they have state or local equivalents as they may be able to step in. "You are our eyes and ears in substantially equivalent agencies."

11:27am - Rosenbaum notes that DOJ is doing more testing that it ever has before but that those tests are not uncovering as much discrimination as they have in the past, not necessarily because there is less discrimination but rather because folks have "gotten wise" to pre-application testing. He is interested in exploring ways to get beyond this challenge.

11:28am - Rosenbaum: "We will be doing more lending discrimination work in this administration."

11:31am - Rosenbaum: "The Community Reinvestment Act did not cause the subprime crisis. We need to say that loudly and as frequently as possible."

11:33am - Rosenbaum: "We are actively looking for amicus [brief] opportunities."

11:36am - While much of the conference to date has had a much more hopeful tone than any NFHA conference I have been to, this final panel is by far the most exciting. The panelists have been specific, thoughtful, but more than anything repeatedly emphasizing that they want to work in collaboration with the fair housing movement. The change in tone from the administration is striking.

11:37am - A questioner asks when the NOFA will be issued, Greene responds that its release is "imminent" and that he was hoping to be able to announce it today.

11:38am - James Perry of New Orleans asks Rosenbaum whether DOJ has changed its policy of 2003 that they won't handle disparate impact cases under the Fair Housing Act, he responds that they will and are actively looking at disparate impact cases right now. He says to look to the to-be-confirmed head of the Civil Rights Unit for a big announcement on that in the future.

11:46am - Deborah Goldberg of NFHA comments that HUD's FHEO should be involved in the rules and processes about data collection in the Making Home Affordable program and encouraged them to make as much of the data public as possible so that partners can engage in helping crunch the numbers. She also comments about the Wells Fargo case and the awful comments and practices they had for minority buyers and minority communities; she encourages them to look for ways to help people who have already been foreclosed on made whole. "They got into trouble before the government woke up."

12:00pm - Wrapping up the live blog of the 2009 NFHA conference. An amazing event, and I'm planning a short-ish, wrap-up post in a week or so. Thanks for tuning in!