The Assassination of a Mission: What Happened to EHOC

By Chaplain Will Jordan, JD
President/CEO, St. Louis Fair Housing Equity Center
Former Executive Director, Metropolitan St. Louis EHOC

A Silent Killing

In December 2023, the Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing & Opportunity Council (EHOC) — once one of the nation’s most successful fair housing organizations — shut its doors. The headlines framed it as a “leadership scandal.” But those who lived it know the truth: EHOC didn’t fail. It was sabotaged.

What happened to EHOC was not the natural death of an organization. It was a mission assassination.

How Sabotage Works

Assassinations are deliberate. They don’t happen by accident. They target those who are strong, not weak. EHOC was thriving: budgets doubled, HUD funding secured, a national reputation cemented. That success made it a target.

When board members and staff, driven by envy and ambition, tried to seize power in 2023, they did more than create internal chaos — they pulled the trigger on a mission that had taken decades to build. They bypassed audits, spread lies, and created confusion. The result was the dismantling of one of St. Louis’s most effective civil rights institutions.

The Aftermath of Betrayal

I filed a whistleblower complaint with HUD on October 31, 2023. HUD and the Inspector General stepped in, suspending EHOC’s funding — not because of corruption, but because governance had collapsed. Within a month, the staff were laid off, the lease terminated, and by Christmas, EHOC was gone.

The coup leaders told the public it was my failure. But the truth is this: you don’t assassinate the weak. You assassinate those who have become too powerful to ignore.

A Mission That Refuses to Die

Like any assassination, the intent was silence. But assassinations rarely kill legacies. They ignite them.

EHOC’s mission — equity in housing, fairness in lending, accountability in banking — didn’t end with the organization’s collapse. Those seeds were carried forward, replanted through the St. Louis Fair Housing Equity Center (FHEC).

Today, that mission continues. Stronger. Freer. Unshaken.

The Call Forward

If EHOC’s story teaches us anything, it is this: fighting for equity will always make you a target. The stronger you become, the more dangerous you appear to those invested in the status quo.

EHOC’s mission was assassinated, but it lives on. And if you believe in justice, fairness, and community reinvestment, then you are part of the living proof that a mission can be attacked, but it cannot be killed.

✊🏽 Chaplain Will Jordan, JD
President/CEO, St. Louis Fair Housing Equity Center
Former Executive Director, Metropolitan St. Louis EHO