City of Salisbury using trivia and prizes to spread awareness of National Fair Housing Month

Published 12:08 am Wednesday, April 12, 2023

SALISBURY — April is National Fair Housing Month and Salisbury is working hard to make sure people remember that going forward.

Every Wednesday this month, the city will be doing a “Fair Housing Challenge” on social media. Once a week, Salisbury will post a multiple choice question where people will have until 4:30 p.m. that day to choose an answer. Anyone who picks the correct one will be entered into a drawing to win a prize.

“One of the things that we want to make sure that we do is help educate people on what fair housing is, which is actually discrimination against the protected classes as it occurs in trying to find a place to live, current people who rent, in lending practices so forth and so on,” Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Anne Little said.

When COVID first hit, the city had several fair housing activities planned, but those got delayed. Little said the human relations office worked with the community planning department to use social media as a way to gain engagement during fair housing month. Trivia was added to attract more attention. Each question comes from multiple sources like fair housing sites and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. The questions that are chosen are the ones that are “most informative and beneficial here locally” according to Little.

The most popular prizes available are “downtown dollars,” which can be used at most downtown businesses.

“It’s a way that we can support downtown Salisbury and also introduce folks to the different businesses downtown,” Little said.