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Fair Housing: It's Your RightKnow the Signs of Housing DiscriminationMinorities, families with children and people with disabilities often are denied housing because of the unfair and illegal practice known as housing descrimination. Tenants and prospective home buyers of any race, color, religion, national origin or sex-including people with disabilities and families with children-have a right to equal housing opportunities. When this right is denied, it is housing discrimination. The federal law that protects you from housing discrimination is the Fair Housing Act, a law enforced by the U.W. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD). If you believe you were treated unfairly because of who you are, you have a right to file a complaint with HUD. But in order to know if your fair housing rights have been violated, you need to know the signs of housing discrimination. Sometimes the signs are obvious, and sometimes they are very subtle. A landlord or developer is breaking the law if he or she does not rent or sell to someone specifically because the prospective tenant or buyer belongs to a specific ethnic group, such as African Americans, Asian/Pacific Islanders, Latinos or Native Americans. It also is illegal to harass tenants with racial or sexual slurs. People with disabilities have additional protections. HUD's definition of being disabled-or handicapped-includes people with physical, mental or developmental disabilites, including hearing, mobility and visual impairements or mental retardation, as well as people who have HIV/AIDS-related illnesses or who are recovering from alcohol or substance abuse. People with disabilities are protected from any discrimination that is based solely on their disability. They have the right to make improvements to rented homes at their own expense if the work is necessary for them to live there. They also have the right to ask landlords to agree to reasonable exemptions from tenants' rules. For instance, a no-pets policy should be waived for a visually impaired tenant with a guide dog. The law protects families with children under 18. This category is called familial status and covers pregnant women, people arranging for an adoption and anyone who has permanent or occasional custody of children under 18, such as foster parents or grandparents. Housing facilities or communities specifically designated for the use of seniors over 55 are exempt from this requirement under the Housing for Older Persons Act (HOPA) Fair Housing Act prohibitionsThe federal Fair Housing Act prohibits several types of discriminatory behavior if they are based solely on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status or disability: 1. Refusing to sell to, rent to or otherwise deal with an interested tenant or buyer. This includes not returning calls or ignoring firm sales offers. 2. Applying different sale, rental, or occupancy terms for different people. This includes asking people of color to pay higher security deposits. 3. The refusal by real estate professionals or companies to serve minority customers, steering customers to certain neighborhoods or making claims about the racial makeup of an area. This includes a real estate agent who tells clients interested in a certain home that a minority family lives next door or companies that purposely place ads where they are not likely to be seen by minorities. 4. Lying about the availability of housing. This includes telling people of color, families or a disabled person that an apartment is already taken, when it is not. 5. Frightening people into renting or selling their property by manipulating their prejudices. Called blockbusting, this includes efforts to buy property at below fair market value by telling people that members of a minority group are moving into the area. 6. Discrimination in financing housing by a bank, savings and loan association, or other business. This includes charging creditworthy minority customers higher interest rates than other customers. 7. Harassment. Tenants and homeowners have the right not to be harassed or frightened into abandoning their leases or leaving their homes. This includes racial and sexual harassment, such as slurs and threats of violence and sexual advances and innuendoes. 8. Local zoning laws that have an unfair effect on minorities and are discriminatory in nature. In some communities, laws that restrict the size or number of occupants in a home have been used to target Latins and Asian households who live with several generations under the same roof. 9. Attempts to threaten or intimidate people so that they will not exercise their rights or file complaints under the Fair Housing Act. Discrimination in rentingThe following practices by landlords or their agents (brokers and property managers) are prohibited: 1. Falsely stating that an available unit has been rented. 2. Setting higher or lower rents, security deposit requirements or credit criteria for porspective status. 3. Failure to respond to inquiries by prospective minority tenants. 4. Failure to provide porspective minority tenants with rental applications. 5. Encouraging long-term tenants to leave their apartments by making false allegations about property values, an increase in criminal or antisocial behavior, or a decline in the quality of schools or other services or facilities. This is usually done so that rents can be increased or so the units can be converted into condominiums or cooperatives and sold. (This is a form of the illegal practice called blockbusting.) Discrimination in housing salesThe sales of single family housing by the owner is generally exempt from the Fair Housing Act. However, owners may not run ads that violate the law. For instance, it would violate fair housing laws if a seller published a classified ad that characterized the racial makeup of the area the home is in, or stated that the house will not be sold to families with children. Illegal actions be real estate salespeople and/or sellers include: 1. Lying about or exaggerating sales terms in order to discourage certain home buyers or to price them out of the market. 2. Failure to inform prospective buyers about all available listings in their price range and desired locations. 3. Using stalling tactics to avoid showing a home to a buyer. 4. Steering prospective buyers only to racially segregated neighborhoods. 5. Refusing to negotiate with interested buyers. 6. Convincing home owners to sell at below-market value by playing on prejudice or biased opinions about how the neighborhoods racial makeup may be changing. (This is a form of the illegal action known as blockbusting.) Mortgage and insurance discriminationSome illegal discrimination is obvious, such as the mobile home park owner who says he will not rent to parents of young children or the real estate agent who refuses to show homes to people of color. But illegal discrimination by the mortgage and insurance industries can be more difficult for individuals to recognize. Do you suspect housing discrimination?If you believe that you have been a victim of housing discrimination or subject to higher income, credit and home appraisal requirements than non-minority mortgage and insurance applicants, call HUD at (800) 669-9777 for information about filing a complaint. HUD's web site also has information about filing a complaint. (www.hud.gov) For additional information contact: Mid-Florida Housing Partnership, Inc. (386) 274-4441 Ext. 301 Daytona Beach area (386) 423-3851 New Smyrna Beach area (386) 822-5058 West Volusia County area (800) 644-6125 Fagler County area (800) 644-6125 Outside Volusia & Flagler County areas or e-mail: mfhp@bellsouth.net DUE TO HIGH VOLUME OF CLIENTS, PLEASE CALL FOR AN APPOINTMENT. THANKYOU. |
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