Trainer: Deb Piltch, Piltch Associates
This important workshop is for:
All Office, Maintenance Staff & RSC/RADs
This training is for all site staff that want to understand fair housing laws as related to onsite practices. The training will provide an overview of fair housing laws and all protected classes, but the focus of the training will be residents with disabilities and topics that relate directly to front line staff including maintenance and custodial staff:
- How to respond to resident requests for assistance that are outside the scope of your work, snow removal, trash removal, etc.
- What questions you can/can’t ask a resident; what information you are allowed to know about residents and what information you aren’t allowed to know.
- Assisting residents after work hours, responding to work orders and companion/service animals.
- While all housing personnel require training in fair housing laws, it is particularly important for front line office staff, maintenance and custodial staff to be trained because they often have the most contact with residents.
The training will be very practical, interactive, and provide significant time for questions and answers.
In addition, part of the training will be focused on the COVID-19 pandemic, how it effects Fair Housing and new guidelines.
- Our country has seen a dramatic increase in discriminatory incidents and harassment based on national origin, which raises significant concern regarding how we effectively address such complaints given that some of the tools we would standardly use may not be available to us.
- The number of incidents of domestic violence have increased, while our capacity to make external emergency transfers may have decreased.
- We have had to significantly change our business operations in order to maintain the health and safety of staff and residents and comply with required and recommended social distancing initiatives leaving us potentially vulnerable to allegations of discriminatory treatment.
- Maintenance personnel face unprecedented challenges in performing their job which raise potential fair housing concerns.
- People impacted by the virus are requesting reasonable accommodations, raising questions about whether they meet the definition of a disability and if so, whether their request is “reasonable.”
- The importance of communicating effectively with applicants and residents with limited English proficiency has been heightened.
- There is a lot of confusion regarding what questions we can legally ask an applicant/resident due to health and safety concerns.
During this training we will also discuss these and other Fair Housing related concerns, and provide ideas as to how to effectively address them.
