Rising home prices may not be fair, but access to safe and affordable housing should be – that is the message this week from local realtors as Baldwin County Commission names April Fair Housing Month.

“To us, that looks like step one is acknowledging there is a need here,” said Evelyn Hall, Diversity Committee chair of Baldwin Realtors and a realtor with Waters Edge Realty in Fairhope.

“We want to take steps as realtors and as neighbors to make sure housing is fair. Not only affordable, but fair.”

Each spring, realtors across the nation commemorate the passage of the Fair Housing Act, signed into law on April 11, 1968. The legislation protects people from discrimination when they are renting or buying a home, getting a mortgage, seeking housing assistance or engaging in other housing-related activities.

The law means potential homeowners cannot be discriminated against for race, color, religion or sexual orientation. Initially passed to overcome the racial separation of neighborhoods through segregation, Hall said discrimination continues today.

“Is everybody going to agree and like the idea? No,” she said. “But if we don’t try and we don’t make it known that we stand for this, what have we done?”

The push to make housing affordable is a different side of the same coin of inclusivity, Hall said.

Realtors, she said, have watched the market in Baldwin County slide upward, making many homes even in what were once considered affordable parts of the county a stretch for many budgets.

And the definition of affordable changes from family to family.

The better goal, she said, is attainable housing.

The county’s median income is used to determine if an acceptable percentage of the housing is attainable for most homeowners there. Hall said the organization plans to look at those numbers in individual municipalities and smaller locations in the county to see if grants and other statewide programs can be used to build more attainable housing that fits the average county income.

“We’re trying to speak on behalf of the community and see which builders will develop a more affordable plan and which communities will allow for more affordable housing,” she said.

“We are not the machine, just the vessel, and we’re trying to work on behalf of our clients and the community,” Hall said. “A lot of these things we’re asking for, if we don’t ask, we won’t get it.”