Ms. Zoe Olson

Ms. Zoe Ann Olson is the Executive Director of the Intermountain Fair Housing Council, Inc. for over eight years. Ms. Olson has 14 years of experience as an attorney with Idaho Legal Aid Services, Inc. (ILAS) where she served as the Housing Specialty Chair and Fair Housing/Fair Lending Project Director. Ms. Olson has had extensive fair housing training via John Marshall University, Seattle University, HUD, Accessibility First, National Consumer Law Center, National Fair Housing Alliance, and AARP. She previously managed (ILAS) Education and Outreach Initiative (EOI) grant, its EOI Lending grant, and with IFHC two MY PEI, one EOI and one FHOI Lending Testing grants as IFHC as sub-recipient. Olson has extensive housing law experience including the FHA and Idaho State housing law. Case experience includes reasonable accommodations and modifications, litigation concerning the FHA, public housing cases, wrongful evictions, repairs, security deposits, mobile home park cases, foreclosures, predatory lending, etc. Ms. Olson was the project manager on a National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling (NFMC) sub-grant received by ILAS from the Idaho Housing and Finance Association (IHFA) which ended December 2010. Through that project she has represented homeowners facing foreclosures, many with predatory loans. Olson has extensive relationships with housing providers, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) staff, social service organizations, and housing law practitioners. She is a member of the Idaho Asset Building Network, the Boise City/Ada County Coalition for the Homeless, was a Board of Director on the Idaho Law Foundation and is a member of the Diversity Law, Real Property Law, Animal Law Sections and Government and Public Sector Law Sections of the Idaho State Bar and member of the Idaho Woman Lawyers. Ms. Olson was a speaker at National APA Conference in 2014 in Seattle providing best practices for affirmatively furthering fair housing with Northwest Region FHIP partners, at the Idaho Affordable Housing Management Association Fair Housing Panel in 2016, at the Fair Housing Conference of San Diego presenting on LEP compliance in 2017, and at the Washington Affordable Housing Association Conference in 2019 providing an overview on fair housing issues and best practices with a panel of regional fair housing directors. She has been the lead trainer throughout Idaho from 2012-2020. She is also a member of the Urban Land Institute, NAACP, NFHA and Girl Scouts.