The Law charges the Commission with encouraging understanding and respect among New York City's many communities. To address this mission, the Community Relations Bureau (CRB) provides services through the Commission's five borough-based Community Service Centers.

The various services of the Community Relations Bureau's field operation compose its Neighborhood Human Rights Program (NHRP). The NHRP works on a local level with block, tenant, religious, educational, merchant and community groups to improve and stabilize communities, educate them about the protections they have under the Human Rights Law, and connect them to the Commission's law enforcement functions.

Each field office, or Community Service Center, offers the Commission's many services including: Immigrant Employment Rights training; Equal Access (disability access) investigations, workshops, and interventions; School Program sessions with three separate curricula (NYC Human Rights Law, Sexual Harassment, and Conflict Resolution); Peer Mediation Training in high and middle schools; and Mortgage Counseling and Predatory Loan Prevention to reduce predatory lending practices. A dedicated team of Human Rights Specialists staffs each borough office.

As part of a comprehensive public education campaign, the Commission published its informational booklet in several additional languages, including French, Korean, and Russian. The information is also available in English, Mandarin and Spanish. The contents of these books appear on the Commission's website at www.nyc.gov/cchr.

The Commission maintains its aggressive outreach campaign to the public through the programs it provides.

IMMIGRANT EMPLOYMENT RIGHTS
The Commission and its partner, the New York Immigration Coalition, conducted 114 workshops and other outreach events during 2004, to inform immigrant workers, employers and immigrant advocacy organizations about their rights and obligations under Federal and
City Laws. The discussions, literature and Power Point presentations explain discrimination based on national origin, citizenship status or alienage. The citywide presentations are conducted in English, Spanish, Chinese, Creole, and Russian.

This program is supported by the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division Office of Special Counsel for Immigrant Related Unfair Employment Practices. OSC awarded the Commission grants in 2003 and 2004 to fund the program, bringing the two-year total to over $140,000.

EQUAL ACCESS
The Commission continues to expand its Equal Access Program. In conjunction with LEB, CRB staff regularly conducts investigations and provides pre-complaint intervention when individuals experience accessibility problems. As a result, the Commission has successfully negotiated 150 modifications during 2004 including installing permanent and portable ramps, bell and buzzer systems for entry to stores, offices, and apartment buildings, making parking spaces available and permitting guide dogs in public accommodations. The program also provides extensive public education.

SCHOOL PROGRAM
Commission staff members taught approximately 10,000 students in grades 6-12 citywide three basic curricula; the Human Rights Law, Sexual Harassment and Conflict Resolution. The Conflict Resolution workshops are the most requested of the three provided by the Commission and often lead to the school's interest in the Commission's Peer Mediation Training Program. CRB staff conducted 456 sessions in 45 schools citywide during 2004.

Another part of the Commission's School Program is the Peer Mediation Training program. This program prepares middle and high school students to mediate non-violent resolutions for problems among their peers that could escalate. CRB's approach to teaching young
students how to be peer mediators is grounded in the principles that underlie the Commission - tolerance, human dignity, and respect. The 10-week after-school program also teaches these young students valuable life skills such as patience, persistence, active listening and problem solving while presenting alternatives to threats and violence. Approximately 20 students per school participate in the voluntary program. The Commission published Talk It Over: A Peer Mediator's Guide for the students in the trainings to assist them with the mediation process.

Over 200 students citywide graduated from the Peer Mediation Training during the 2003 - 2004 school year. The Commission expanded the program for the 2004 - 2005 school year increasing the number of schools from 12 to 15. In mid 2004, the JPMorgan Chase Foundation once again awarded the Commission a grant to continue its work, bringing the two-year total to $102,000.

MORTGAGE COUNSELING AND PREDATORY LOAN PREVENTION
CRB staff members track possible discriminatory and predatory lending practices and conduct outreach and counseling services to address the community instability created by these practices. These lending practices include excessively high fees and commissions, misrepresentation of the mortgage's terms and conditions, high interest rates, repeated financing of loans, balloon payments and the financing of high-cost credit insurance. CRB staff provided 391 counseling sessions for home-owners facing foreclosure and also conducted 5 large workshops.

The Commission began an aggressive outreach campaign to complement its counseling services. The campaign targets women who comprise nearly 95% of the counseling clients and alerts them to predatory lending practices and the discrimination often associated with those practices. The Commission has identified beauty parlors, nail salons, laundromats and other locations frequented by women for distributing written materials that summarize these illegal practices. The information will also contain helpful resources, including consumer and banking information. The Commission also participates in homeownership seminars and predatory lending workshops in areas prone to this type
of discrimination.

OTHER CRB ACTIVITIES
The Commission is also involved in activities that promote fair housing - equal housing opportunity under the Law. These activities include fair housing training for providers and protected groups, resolution of informal housing complaints, particularly those that are disability-related, investigation of unlawful real estate practices, providing technical assistance to tenants as part of the Citywide Task Force on Housing Court, and active participation in community activities that encourage harmonious intergroup relations and neighborhood stability in areas undergoing ethnic change.

The Commission is providing assistance to two Princeton University professors with their study of the impact of race and criminal records on securing entry-level positions. The study identifies various
discriminatory practices that employers use and measures to what extent discrimination exists. The project uses matched pairs of testers (Whites and African-Americans or Latinos) who apply for the same job with the same resumes and tracks call-backs, interviews, and job offers. The Commission received $12,000 in a grant from the JEHT Foundation to support the project's focus group research and public education activities.

CRB has rolled out its new comprehensive database. The program will now enable the Commission to track CRB's activities more efficiently and comprehensively. The Commission received a $13,650 Planning Grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to fund this project.
By year end, CRB staff delivered 42,410 units of service to individuals throughout the five boroughs.

CRB STAFF
The Community Relations Bureau consists of 34 Human Rights Specialists assigned to the Commission's Community Service Centers, and Program staff. In addition, CRB has 6 support staff members.