Fair Housing Council of Suburban Philadelphia and Suburban Fair Housing Records

Friends Suburban Housing, Inc., was a non-discriminatory real estate brokerage firm in the Philadelphia suburbs. It was founded in 1956 by a group of concerned individuals, mostly Quakers, who worked towards racial intergration in housing. In 1963, its name was changed to Suburban Fair Housing to reflect a broadened base of support. In 1968, the group broke legal ground with a successful lawsuit against the Main Line Board of Realtors. The lawsuit resulted in opening access to the Board of Realtors multiple listing service. Margaret H. Collins was executive secretary of the company, which ended operation in 1976. Collins, the daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia Quaker paper manufacturer, was born in 1908. She was educated at Sarah Lawrence College, University of California at Berkeley, and Bryn Mawr College where she did graduate work in social research. A tireless advocate for racial equality, she continued to work to make housing available to low and moderate income families after Suburban Fair Housing was closed. She died in 2006.

The Fair Housing Council of Suburban Philadelphia was also founded in 1956 as the Southeast Delaware County Area Committee of Friends Suburban Housing Committee. A year later the name was changed to Committee for Democracy in Housing of Lansdowne & Vicinity. Early board members included Quakers George and Helen Hardin, Francis Nicholson, and Margaret Collins; many of its supporters were also involved with the Race Relations Committee of Philadlephia Yearly Meeting, and the program was endorsed by the Social Order Commmittee and the Community Relations Program of the American Friends Service Committee. The initial aim was to provide non-financial encouragement and support to African Americans seeking to buy homes in the area and to sellers who became victims of racial violence because of their commitment to open housing.

By the 1960s the group was increasingly inter-faith and inter-organizational and became the Lansdowne-Upper Darby Fair Housing Council. "Friendly Neighbor" ads, signed by area homeowners, were published in the local press. The Committee began monitoring real estate agencies' performance and "testing" for compliance became the organization's major program. As a result of discrimination charges brought by them against a local real estate firm, the Pennsylvania Real Estate Commission suspended the owner's license. The LUDFHC was renamed the Fair Housing Council of Delaware County in 1981, and in 1992 changed its name again to the Fair Housing Council of Suburban Philadelphia to reflect its expanded service area. In 1994 the FHCSP moved its offices from the Media Fellowship House to Swarthmore