The Rotary Club of Hopkinsville heard a presentation from the executive director of the Human Rights Commission at Tuesday’s meeting, who explained the Commission’s mission and push for change.
Idalia Luna has been serving as executive director for several months now, and she says a lot of it is investigating complaints in the housing sector in the city. She says the HRC is constantly working to protect human rights and weed out discrimination.
Luna says the majority of Hopkinsville’s housing is rental in nature, and that’s a problem.
She says there need to be laws in place that protect tenants, and she intends to strive towards making sure there is fairness in existing ordinances, as a large amount of the population faces eviction each year.
The Human Rights Commission helps those affected with filing complaints with the ordinance review board and Community Development Services, which can sometimes result in protection from evictions and with problems addressed. Luna says that very few people actually complete the filing process before an eviction occurs—or even file at all, fearing retribution—and the Commission is looking into ways to address that issue, along with others.