HOUSING RESOURCE CENTER

Housing Resource Center

Polish American Association – Technical Assistance Community Development (TECOM) formerly known as Housing Resource Center has been serving as a unique community resource for dissemination of unbiased information and a counseling agency providing help related to housing issues like: affordable housing for low- and/or moderate-income community, homelessness prevention, preservation of existing housing, foreclosure prevention, building safety, and landlord/tenant education on topics like: conflict resolution, lock-outs, evictions, retaliation, discrimination.

The ultimate goal is to help our low and moderate income clients find, preserve and maintain affordable housing and prevent homelessness. We meet these goals by providing bilingual seminars and workshops and counseling. The program has created an informational system involving public and private agencies.

New immigrants with their lack of English and knowledge of housing law are often victims of unscrupulous landlords who take advantage of hard working immigrants and their families. We observed the increase of unlawful lock outs, number of illegal eviction as well as security deposit problems, breaking the Chicago Heat Ordinance, Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance or Fair Housing Act. The program has also been developing strategies on issues regarding affordable housing to assist special needs populations. It addresses the community housing needs and concerns like: establishing and maintaining credit, home improvement issues, renting process and home repairs, lack of printed bilingual materials, lack of knowledge regarding procedures on obtaining home improvement loans.

Although Polish American Association Housing Resource Center (HRC) has been serving the entire community, the project – targets the Polish-speaking residents (Polish and Eastern-European community) who haave limited or no access to available information and resources offered by public and private institutions. The program has been referring clients interested in those issues to attorneys, mortgage brokers, banks, and reliable and affordable home improvement sources.

The John Marshall Law School (JMLS) Fair Housing Legal Support Center

Consumer Guide prepared by the John Marshall Law School Fair Housing Legal Support Center (English version)

http://www.jmls.edu/fairhousing/pdf/consumer-guide-english.pdf

Przewodnik dla Konsumenta o Rzetelnych Pozyczkach i Zachowaniu Wlasnosci Domu - przygotowany przez John Marshall Law School Fair Housing Legal Support Center (po polsku)

http://www.jmls.edu/fairhousing/pdf/consumer-guide-polish.pdf