Confronting the History of Housing Discrimination: This workshop presents the history of housing discrimination and the racial justice implications of decisions that we make about affordable housing in our state. The workshop will cover:

• Defining racism
• Introduction to the racial wealth and opportunity gap
• Building an inequitable America: history of zoning and housing discrimination
• Introduction to affordable housing in this context
• Framing our challenge
• Building an inclusive community
• Making an affirmative case for affordable housing development

The primary presenter for this workshop will be Bob Van Meter. For the last 35 years Bob has been a community organizer and community developer working in Boston. He served as Executive Director for the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) Boston program for ten years from 2008 to 2018. LISC is a community development lender and investor, supporting community initiatives and investing in affordable housing and community economic development efforts in Boston’s neighborhoods. While at LISC Bob organized a Gentrification Learning Community bringing together organizers, activists, and researchers to better understand the dynamics of gentrification in Greater Boston. Bob has served on the boards of the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance and Transportation for Massachusetts and the Mel King Institute for Community Building. For fifteen years from 1993 to 2008 Bob was the Executive Director of the Allston Brighton Community Development Corporation, a neighborhood-based developer of affordable housing. He spent eight years as a community and tenant organizer in Chicago and Boston. In addition to his work with JALSA, Bob is teaching a course on Affordable Housing in the Carroll School of Business at Boston College.