April is Fair Housing Month, a month dedicated to commemorating and raising awareness about the Fair Housing Act. This year, we’re proud to highlight Senior Planner Violet Brown who is making a meaningful impact on housing initiatives across Oregon. As a former public interest attorney and housing advocate in NYC, Violet brings a unique perspective to addressing housing challenges in our communities.
With nearly a decade of experience serving low-income communities through the Brooklyn Office for the Aging, Violet has represented over 700 families and helped influence legislation in NYC before transitioning to planning work. Today, she applies her legal expertise and community advocacy experience to craft policies that address Oregon’s most pressing housing needs.
As a proud partner of the Fair Housing Council of Oregon during this important month of awareness and action, we’re excited to share insights from someone working at the forefront of housing policy development and implementation in our state.
As both a former public interest attorney and current senior planner, how has your unique background shaped your approach to housing issues and advocacy?
As an attorney, I worked for a non-profit providing free legal services for low-income communities in NYC and was happy to serve for nearly a decade in the Brooklyn Office for the Aging. The most pressing concern was usually eviction. Families often faced a multitude of issues, but securing safe and reliable housing was the first step to future stability. I worked with the real-world application of public policy and got to know the communities I served well enough to see the ways that housing, economics, transportation, parks, and infrastructure need to work together for individuals to thrive. I was often tasked with identifying the relevant policies and weaving together facts to tell a story to the court. As a planner, I'm still telling stories through facts and data. My legal mind is always working to connect details and to follow the implications of policy as far and as wide as can be anticipated.
When I left legal services, it was estimated that I was lucky enough to represent over seven hundred families and influence at least one piece of new legislation in NYC. I was ready to build on that experience and work directly with cities to craft policy centered around the experiences of individuals living in our communities and to study the ways that different study areas intersect. As a former New Yorker, I was particularly interested in the realities for transit dependent households and the Louisianian in me focused on natural hazards and flood insurance. Similar to planning, legal education is like learning a language or technique that can be applied across disciplines. I think my legal background gives me an ease with the formal language and structure of legislation and code and with public speaking in general. My community advocacy background specifically has helped me to connect with individuals during our engagement efforts and to understand how their stories or experiences fit into our plan policies.
What motivated you to transition from legal advocacy in NYC to planning work, and how do you feel your legal background strengthens the housing projects you're currently working on?
The most pressing issue in fair housing in Oregon is the shortage of affordable homes, which greatly limits housing choice. I've enjoyed getting to study and work on Housing Production Strategies aimed at taking relevant metrics and crafting policies that are designed to promote the building of needed housing. This isn't something I would have been able to contribute to as an attorney. While I spent all of my legal career working in large cities (New York, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C), as a planning consultant I've been fortunate to work with smaller cities, like Canby and Molalla, on their HPS documents. I enjoy seeing the way that housing policy works across jurisdictions of different sizes and different natural topographies.
What do you see as the most pressing fair housing challenges in our community right now? How are our housing projects working to address them?
This is a really exciting time to be a housing advocate in Oregon. New programs and rules are unfolding at the state level that bring to bear significant resources, in the form of best practices research, data analytics, and technical assistance through staff support and grants. I'm eager to see how the program takes shape and the impact that we will see as Oregonians on the access to affordable housing choices for everyone. Having grown up in a small town in Louisiana, the uniqueness of rural poverty as a public policy issue is something that I hope to continue to work on in connection with the attempts the state is making to address affordable housing across communities.
What aspect of the housing projects that you're currently working on are you most excited about?
