Housing Discrimination based on Disablilty violates the Fair Housing Act.

Refusing to consider providing a prospective tenant with limited mobility as a result of a disability the option of a FREE designated or disability parking space as a reasonable accommodation violates the Fair Housing Act.

If you have been discriminated against and would like to file a complaint click on where it says COMPLAINT on this website. If you would like to know your obligations and responsibilities as a housing provider contact the us at 561-533-8717. Fair Housing; Its for Everyone! 

Coalition of 78 Civil Rights Organizations Urges Trump Administration Not to Eliminate Fair Access to Lending for Women, Underserved Communities

 

A coalition led by the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), including dozens of fair housing, civil rights, and consumer advocacy organizations, filed a comment urging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) not to finalize a proposed rule that would weaken hard-won fair lending protections for women and limit affordable credit opportunities for underserved communities. The letter submitted by the coalition explained that weakening the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) reverses critically important protections, restricts future business opportunities for thousands of U.S. companies, and acts contrary to Congress’s intent. 

The coalition of 29 national and 49 local organizations explains that the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking released by the CFPB would eviscerate longstanding fair lending and consumer protections in three dangerous ways:  

  • The proposed rule would eliminate ECOA’s ban on lending practices that disproportionally harm people based on their characteristics and identity, such as gender, race, color, national origin, age, marital status, religion, or because the applicant receives public assistance. For example, ECOA has barred lenders from excluding consideration of the income of parents who are on parental leave, a practice that falls more heavily on women. If the proposed rule is enacted, this means lenders could freely use credit models that unnecessarily exclude everyday people, without any requirement to implement fairer alternatives. The comment also explains that this change would permit algorithmic discrimination, in which models trained on data distorted by past discrimination may recreate these disparities in present day transactions.
  • The proposed rule would give banks the green light to engage in redlining practices that deny Black, Latino, and other underserved communities fair access to safe and non-predatory mortgages. For example, this rule change would allow banks to only do business in predominately White neighborhoods, leaving other communities reliant on risky, high-cost lenders that offer predatory loans with exorbitant interest rates, draining hard-earned wealth. The comment submitted explains that, by removing protections for consumers who are shopping for a loan, the proposed rule would allow widespread discrimination in U.S. credit markets. 
  • The proposed rule would stop lenders from establishing Special Purpose Credit Programs (SPCP), which help financial institutions responsibly lend to more creditworthy borrowers through means such as offering downpayment assistance. These programs are critical to making the American Dream of homeownership accessible to all people. This includes first-generation rural, urban, and suburban residents unable to rely on family members for downpayment assistance because previous generations were wrongfully excluded from federal homeownership programs. The comment explains that SPCPs are critically necessary to fulfill ECOA’s promise and that they expand access to credit to those who have been historically denied it.

NFHA President and CEO Lisa Rice called the proposed rule change “unconscionable” and said it “must never come into effect.” The proposal would weaken existing protections as housing discrimination remains at near-record levels, as documented in NFHA’s recently-released 2025 Fair Housing Trends Report. Instead of responding to the desires of voters to create more affordability, the Trump administration is once again making it costlier for everyday people to afford and access the American Dream. 

ECOA is one of the country’s most important civil rights laws. It was originally passed to ensure that women could fairly obtain credit in their own names without, for example, needing a husband or male relative co-signing a loan. Congress soon expanded its protections to cover other protected classes, with the intent that ECOA would ensure equal credit opportunities for all. The federal agencies charged with implementing it—first the Federal Reserve Board and then, after the Dodd-Frank Act, the CFPB—promulgated regulations consistent with this expansive intent, but the Trump Administration now proposes to fundamentally weaken these protections. 

The weakening of ECOA, paired with recent actions by the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has undermined the safety of the housing finance system. The FHFA Director recently prohibited the Government Sponsored Enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from supporting SPCPs. These programs provided $82 million in reduced costs to 57,282 borrowers of all races from 2022 to 2024 and helped to generate billions in economic activity. SPCPs also help lenders circumvent systemic barriers that limit credit access for People of Color. An estimated 70 percent of future homebuyers will be Latino and Black. Without access to fair and affordable mortgages for these consumers, the system will fail.   

“The proposed rule changes are a death knell for lenders. Disparate impact is a business-growth engine, and any company that wants to remain viable and competitive will continue to use this critical tool. Disparate impact helps businesses grow and expand their products and services by revealing and removing unnecessary barriers that arbitrarily limit customer reach, suppress innovation, and constrain business opportunities,” said Rice. “The CFPB’s proposal ignores mounds of evidence revealing ongoing lending bias, is an assault on decades of settled fair lending law and would promote discrimination in our credit markets. It is a continuation of this administration’s attack on protections against redlining. For these reasons and more, this rule must never be promulgated.”   

“By eliminating the longstanding ‘effects test’ under the ECOA, this rule would also strip away one of the most powerful tools for uncovering and remedying systemic bias in lending and take us back to the days when women could be denied credit because they are on maternity leave,” said Rice. “Disparate impact has been recognized and upheld for more than forty years as essential to enforcing equal lending opportunities and ensuring everyone has access to the credit they deserve. This reckless proposal would embolden discriminatory practices, undermine civil rights enforcement, and roll back generations of progress towards economic justice while threatening the health of the economy.”  

Click here to read the full comment.

For interviews, please e-mail NFHA Senior Advisor for Communications, Marketing, and Education Julian Glover at JGlover@NationalFairHousing.org 

New Fair Housing Trends Report Finds Pervasive Discrimination as Federal Government Rolls Back Civil Rights

WASHINGTON, D.C. (November 5, 2025) – Today, the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) released its 2025 Fair Housing Trends Report revealing that 32,321 housing discrimination complaints were filed nationwide in 2024. The numbers signal one of the highest figures in more than two decades, amid a steep decline in the nation’s ability to enforce civil rights protections as federal funding cuts take hold during the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history.  

  • Disability related discrimination accounted for the largest share of complaints at 54.6%, followed by race, national origin, sex, familial status, and religion.  
  • Complaints based on national origin rose 8.45% from the previous year, marking the highest number since 2018.  
  • Retaliation complaints more than doubled from the previous year to the highest recorded level.

And even as discrimination rises, the federal government is pulling back from enforcement. Recent mass firings at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO) during the government shutdown have gutted the department’s ability to investigate violations. FHEO now has a third of the staff it had on January 20, 2025, when President Trump was sworn into office.

“This report sends a very clear message: America is in the midst of a fair and affordable housing crisis,” said Lisa Rice, President & CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance. “On top of the crisis, people are being denied housing opportunities because of immutable characteristics like race, gender, and disability status. And what makes this moment especially alarming is that our civil rights infrastructure itself is under attack across the country.” 

Deep funding cuts to fair housing programs have forced several community-based local fair housing agencies to close their doors—the very frontline groups that investigated nearly 75% of all housing discrimination complaints in 2024. These actions have left disabled veterans seeking to get off the streets; seniors requiring modifications to their homes; families with children seeking a home; survivors of domestic violence fleeing sexual and physical abuse; Black and Latino potential homebuyers seeking a mortgage; and more unprotected. 

NFHA is calling on Congress to hold an immediate oversight hearing and ensure HUD’s fair housing programs are fully funded.  

“America’s fair housing infrastructure is being dismantled and defunded in the very moment it’s needed most,” said Nikitra Bailey, NFHA Executive Vice President. “Congress must ensure HUD’s fair housing programs are fully funded and exercise its oversight authority over HUD to ensure decades of civil rights progress is not reversed through unlawful executive action. Access to fair housing is a basic human right—it’s the law.” 

The report also examines how artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithmic housing tools are creating new threats of digital redlining, steering, and bias in tenant screening and pricing. NFHA calls for mandatory AI fairness audits and federal transparency standards to ensure these technologies do not deepen existing inequities.  

“Even though we are facing daunting threats, even though we are facing an unprecedented level of attacks on fair housing—we are still advancing the law. We are still marching forward because justice must prevail,” said Rice.  

“In the wake of this report we must encourage our Senators and members of Congress to support fair and affordable housing”, stated Vince Larkins, FHC President/CEO. “The sad fact is that it has been 57 years since the passage of the Fair Housing Act and people with disabilities, like disabled veterans, families with children and people just because of their natioanl origin or color of their skin, still have to suffer the indignity of housing discrimination and the lack of safe, decent and affordable housing in our nation”, he further stated.

Vince Larkins is a member of the Board of the Directors of the National Fair Housing Alliance and chairs the Goverment Affairs Advisory Committee.

The full 2025 Fair Housing Trends Report including data analysis, policy recommendations, and member case studies is available now by clicking this link.  

The Federal Government Shutdown Exacerbates Harm of HUD’s Dismantling of its Fair Housing Infrastructure

On Tuesday, September 30, 2025, Congress failed to pass and send to the president a new spending bill to avert a shutdown of the federal government. Without the passage of a Continuing Resolution, federal funding stopped at midnight, ceasing nonessential federal operations and resulting in furloughs of thousands of federal workers. The funding gap disrupts critical services provided to the people in America by the federal government, including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) ability to fulfill its important responsibility of enforcing the Fair Housing Act, which the federal government does not permit to continue during a shutdown. It also hampers HUD’s ability to advance responsible AI in housing infrastructure and guard against algorithmic discrimination in housing and lending systems, and risks potential housing displacements tied to the rapid construction of data centers.  

In response, the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) issued the following statement:

“Halting the services of HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO) during the nation’s fair and affordable housing crisis places the lives of millions of people in jeopardy, as fair housing is vital to people’s ability to live and thrive. Disabled veterans seeking to get off the streets and into permanent housing; seniors who need a safe place to live; families with children denied housing; survivors of domestic violence and/or sexual assault fleeing abuse; people with disabilities who are denied accessible housing; Black and Latino consumers trying to secure a mortgage on fair terms; women experiencing sexual harassment by their landlords; and others seeking housing free of discrimination will all be devastated by our federal government’s inability to enforce fair housing rights. 

“This significant disturbance comes as HUD has already unlawfully eviscerated our nation’s fair housing infrastructure. And recent whistleblower complaints provide evidence of the ways that FHEO is disregarding its fair housing enforcement obligations. Further, the Trump administration has issued executive orders attacking civil rights, closed agencies, fired federal staff, eliminated watchdogs, stripped away federal oversight, rescinded anti-discrimination policies, eliminated funding, withdrawn the U.S. from international human rights bodies, and threatened civil and criminal actions against civil and human rights groups and public officials sowing chaos, fear, insecurity, and dysfunction around the country. 

“Stopping HUD’s vital services while people throughout the nation are in dire need and struggling with rising housing costs, increased complaints of housing discrimination, a lack of affordable housing supply, and technology’s growing role in determining housing decisions will worsen the fair and affordable housing crisis. And the shutdown impairs the ability of nonprofit, local fair housing organizations to protect people from housing discrimination—compounding the damage HUD has already done by belatedly making FY’24 grants under the Fair Housing Initiatives Program at the last possible minute.  

“The administration’s AI Action Plan has ignited a push to build data centers at an unprecedented pace. Yet the very staff who protect communities from environmental hazards tied to this surge are being furloughed or, if the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) follows through with its threat, permanently laid off. This contradiction undermines both the integrity of the AI agenda and the health and safety of the neighborhoods where these facilities are being sited. NFHA warns that the risks are not hypothetical. During the 2018–2019 shutdown, the Environmental Protection Agency operated with only about six percent of its staff, focusing solely on emergencies while oversight, inspections, and community protections were suspended. A repeat of that reality would leave millions of people in American exposed to unchecked environmental harms and deprive fair housing groups of critical government partners. 

“NFHA urges Congress and the Trump administration to negotiate in good faith in the best interest of the people of America on a stopgap measure and ensure our nation’s fair housing laws are fully enforced. It is imperative that our government serves all people at this moment as they are relying on HUD’s crucial services and support for one of life’s most basic necessities—housing. People are worried sick about receiving fair housing opportunities to stay alive and thrive during these challenging times. 

“Finally, thwarting the federal government from properly functioning is a threat to our nation’s democracy. Any attempt to use the shutdown to trigger a further major reduction of HUD FHEO staff must be avoided at all costs. FHEO has operated for years with insufficient staff, and this administration already has decimated it. Further attempts to hollow out the division during a shutdown would be an abdication of HUD’s responsibilities under the Fair Housing Act while inflicting needless pain on the people of America.” 

 

 

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