Contact:

Christiana Ferris Dave Deneau

602-262-6169 602-256-4128

July 19, 2000

The city of Phoenix has been selected as one of 50 best practice award winners from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity.

The award recognizes the Phoenix Equal Opportunity Department's production of a fair housing training video, "Be Fair . . . or Beware!" The video shows examples of fair housing mistakes and demonstrates how landlords, leasing agents, real estate agents and other housing professionals can avoid these mistakes and maintain a discrimination-free environment.

"We receive an average of 100 fair housing complaints each year and realized the need to educate local housing professionals," said Lionel Lyons, director of the Phoenix Equal Opportunity Department. "A training tool like this video did not exist in the marketplace, so we decided to create one ourselves. By reminding landlords of their duty to provide fair housing and examining some of the gray areas in housing law, we hope to prevent this discrimination from happening in the first place."

Phoenix officials will receive the award at HUD's second annual Best Practices Symposium in Washington, DC in August. The city of Phoenix also was one of several recipients of a local best practices award from HUD's Arizona state office for its participation in the "Fair Housing: Then, Now and Tomorrow" conference last April in conjunction with the Arizona Fair Housing Partnership.

For more information or to order a copy of the videotape, call 602-262-7486/voice or 602-534-1557/TDD.

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