MCAD to Reopen Office in City, $230,000 for Fair Housing Project announced

By Shaun Sutner TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

ssutner@telegram.com

 

 

 

WORCESTER— It was a good day for human and civil rights activists.

 

City, state and federal officials convened yesterday to announce the reopening of the long-closed Worcester office of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, and the return to City Hall of the city’s Office of Human Rights.

 

MCAD closed its Worcester office 16 years ago, forcing those with rights complaints to file them in Boston or Springfield. The city angered civil liberties activists when it moved the Human Rights office out of City Hall in 2005 into a municipal office building on Meade Street.

 

At a press conference outside the mayor’s office at City Hall, a federal housing official also handed an oversized replica of a $230,000 check, a grant to the Legal Assistance Corp. of Central Massachusetts for the Worcester Fair Housing Project. The project is an effort to enforce laws against housing discrimination.

 

Out of that money, the Legal Assistance Corp., which provides legal help in civil cases to those who cannot afford a lawyer, is funding $35,000 for a Human Rights office outreach worker. The outreach worker will share the office on the first floor of City Hall with a full-time MCAD investigator, Nomxolisi Khumato.

 

“We don’t have rights unless we have an ability to defend and protect them,” said state Sen. Edward M. Augustus Jr., D-Worcester, who pushed for legislation and funding to re-establish an MCAD presence in the city.

 

The Legal Assistance Corp. grant is one of five grants this year to groups in New England from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that total nearly $1 million.

 

Jonathan L. Mannina, executive director of the group, said in 2006 that Legal Assistance Corp. handled 150 complaints about housing discrimination in the city. Most of the cases involved alleged discrimination against people with disabilities; others were made by families with children and those alleging race discrimination.

 

The new anti-discrimination project will focus on the city’s large Hispanic and Vietnamese communities, Mr. Mannina said.

 

Mayor Konstantina B. Lukes read a proclamation declaring yesterday Universal Human Rights Day here and the start of a yearlong commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations on Dec. 10, 1948.

 

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” said James G. Gardiner, acting director of the city’s Department Health and Human Services, quoting the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 essay “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

 

The new MCAD and Human Rights outreach offices will occupy the former assessor’s map room. The office is expected to open in early January, with daytime hours all week and evening hours twice a week, officials said. The main Human Rights office will stay on Meade Street.

 

Contact Shaun Sutner by e-mail at ssutner@telegram.com.