Seventh-grader's winning artwork will imprint the fair housing message across Oregon and Southwest Washington

Cassiel Thom created a poster for April's Fair Housing Month that was judged the best in Oregon in 2011. And then she did it again in 2012, with a poster that was chosen by judges out of 335 entries.

Whether you’re doing business in the county courthouse in Hood River or the post office in Prineville, Cassiel’s winning artwork will likely be there as a reminder of what neighborhoods look like when fair housing practices are in place. And what better person to interpret the concept than Cassiel, who lives with her mother and grandmother in a duplex run by the nonprofit organization, REACH. REACH serves a diverse community of low-income residents in Portland. Some are disabled. Some are elderly. Some are children. And they come from a rich variety of racial and ethnic heritages.

Every April for the past 14 years, as one way of honoring Fair Housing Month, the Fair Housing Council of Oregon runs a statewide poster art contest, open to students in grades one through eight. The challenge given to these students is to draw an interpretation of what fair housing means to them, after learning a little bit about the laws and beliefs behind the idea. This year the poster topic was "Fair Housing Welcomes Everyone Home."

The judges were eight volunteers from the government and nonprofit sectors, as well as local artists. They must have been amazed to discover that Cassiel's poster was the winning one two years in a row.

United Nations family

I had a chance to talk with Cassiel, a student at Portland's Metropolitan Learning Center, after City Commissioner Nick Fish signed the Fair Housing Proclamation at City Hall last week. It didn’t take me long to realize that Cassiel’s ability to symbolize fair housing in words was as astute as it was on paper. One of her metaphors stuck with me. It was about eating. “If you’re a picky eater and you only eat tomatoes,” she said, “you are really limiting yourself.” “If you can eat and digest all foods, you’re open to all things in the world.” Her grandmother, also present, wasn’t surprised at Cassiel’s comment. “We’re a United Nations kind of family,” Margie Thom said.

History lesson

During our conversation, Diane Hess, outreach and education director for the council, brought up a fact that is hard to fathom in 2012 but true. Before 1998, landlords were free to say, “We don’t want kids living in this community .” About 70 percent of landlords actually said this openly to potential renters. Fortunately, such discrimination is illegal now, as is any type of discrimination related to renting or purchasing housing based on “protected class status.”

Even so, people in the housing business still dodge the law, and FCHO exists to protect the public against exclusionary housing practices. The council receives 3,000 to 4,000 calls a year about possible civil rights violations of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. About 10 percent of those calls are lodged as formal complaints and are taken to the next level. Some result in fines or court judgments against the offenders or as settlements to the victims.

Find out about the other artistic students whose poster art was recognized this April by FHCO.