The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) has published “Making Every Neighborhood a Place of Opportunity,” a report on the condition of fair housing in the United States in 2018. As much as anything else, the report highlights the Department of Housing & Urban Development’s (HUD) growing abrogation of its responsibility to enforce the federal Fair Housing Act. Highlights of their report include:
- There were 28,843 fair housing complaints in 2017; and
- 57% of complaints were based on disability, 19% on race, and 9% on familial status.
The most telling trend outlined in the report is the growing evidence of HUD’s failure to aggressively enforce the law. While the number of fair housing complaints increased by 2.35% from 2016 to 2017, more than 71% of the complaints were handled by private, nonprofit fair housing organizations. State and local government fair housing organizations processed 23.9% of complaints and only 4.55% were handled by HUD. The remaining 41 cases were brought by the Justice Department.
This continues a two-year trend of HUD taking a much more passive approach to fair housing enforcement. This is not a surprising development inasmuch as the current HUD leadership has shown little resolve for fair housing actions. In fact, HUD’s newly revised mission statement eliminated language relating to nondiscrimination, and HUD is pulling back on efforts to encourage integration of high opportunity neighborhoods.
What this new data indicates is that while HUD is the federal agency charged with enforcing federal fair housing laws, it is now state, local, and nonprofit organizations that are most likely to bring a fair housing action. As is indicated by the overall increase in fair housing enforcement activity, housing owners and operators should not let their guard down with regard to fair housing compliance. HUD’s growing lack of commitment to fair housing is being offset by state, local, and nonprofit efforts.