Valerie Watson is the Fair Housing Manager for the Stark County Regional Planning Commission, Stark County Fair Housing Department. She has over 34 years of experience in fighting housing discrimination and advocating for the citizens of Stark County.
As Fair Housing Manager, Ms. Watson uses her positive attitude and tireless energy to assist complainants when they believe they have been discriminated against. Some of her clients have received large monetary settlements. Her most notable case settled for $850,000 in 2014. Along with Stark County, the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, U.S. Department of Justice, and six individual plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the owners of four Jackson Township complexes. That settlement was believed to be the largest in Stark County’s history regarding housing discrimination.
Ms. Watson specializes in counseling clients on the Landlord-Tenant Law; coordinating and conducting a variety of fair housing testing investigations, promoting fair housing education by providing comprehensive overviews of the fair housing law to a variety of audiences, including municipalities, real estate professionals, landlords, social workers, and consumers; bringing administrative complaints at the federal, state, and local levels to conciliate and settle fair housing cases; developing educational programs, workshops and seminars that expand and improve the fair housing department’s efforts in equal housing opportunity and justice; developing educational literature; and supervising and overseeing the fair housing program for the city of Alliance.
Ms. Watson is also a Real Estate Agent with Coldwell Banker Schmidt Realty. She has been a licensed realtor for more than 30 years. She has assisted sellers in marketing and selling their properties and buyers in helping them find and purchase the homes of their dreams.
Ms. Watson graduated from Bowling Green State University and Malone University. She is the former Administrative Assistant at LIFE Ministries International Church. Ms. Watson resides in Canton, Ohio.