What Is Fair Housing and Why Does It Still Matter?

What Is Fair Housing and Why Does It Still Matter?

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America’s cities and suburbs were built on housing discrimination.

When the suburbs went up across the nation after World War II, people of color were often barred from owning or renting in these communities through language written in the deeds of these homes. Many people of color were barred from receiving mortgages for nicer homes in more desirable neighborhoods due to redlining. The loans they did receive were often predatory, and many were consigned to renting while their white peers built wealth through homeownership, money that’s still being passed down to future generations today.

It wasn’t that long ago that women were routinely denied mortgages unless they had male co-signers, landlords didn’t have to make their buildings wheelchair-accessible, and families with young children could be denied rental housing.

The rampant discrimination in the housing market led to the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. It outlawed discrimination based on race, color, national origin, and religion in everything from refusing to rent or sell a home, to approving a mortgage or home insurance policy, or doing so at unfavorable or more expensive terms.

Over the years, more protected classes have been added to the Fair Housing Act. It’s now illegal to discriminate against someone based on familial status, disability, and sex, which has been expanded to include sexual orientation and gender identity when it comes to housing.

Many states and cities have even broader fair housing laws, which also protect folks based on age, source of income, marital status, veteran status, primary language, immigration status, etc.

However, housing discrimination remains a widespread problem across the country.

Thousands of fair housing complaints are filed each year

In 2020, there were 28,712 fair housing complaints, which is a slight decrease from 28,880 in 2019, and 31,202 in 2018, according to the 2021 Fair Housing Trends Report by the National Fair Housing Alliance.

These may seem like a lot, but in fact, many cases of housing discrimination go unreported. Many people don’t recognize that they are victims of discrimination or that they can fight back.

“We’re still fighting the battle,” says Steve Dane, a nationally recognized civil rights attorney who has litigated hundreds of fair housing and civil rights claims. “There continues to be a lot of discrimination in the marketplace that includes race—that hasn’t gone away.”

More than half of the complaints were based on disability, at 55%, while race-based discrimination made up about 17%. Family status accounted for about 8%.

Dane recently worked with a woman who was looking for a place to rent. When the landlord learned how many children she had, she was told she couldn’t rent the place.

“The family size complied with the local zoning, but it was the landlord who was making decisions on how much space you need to sleep in a bedroom,” Dane says.

A home value increased nearly $150K when a white neighbor pretended to own it

Last year, marketing executive Asmirh Davis and her husband attempted to refinance the loan on their Atlanta-area home to take advantage of low mortgage interest rates. The Black couple were shocked when their bank-commissioned appraisal came back valuing their house at just slightly above their 2015 purchase price, despite the extensive renovations they had made and significantly higher property values during the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, the white appraiser—who spent maybe 40 minutes in their three-story house with 15-foot ceilings and a walk-out basement—appraised the home for just $500,000.

“The appraisal was so egregiously below market value of our home, we were double-checking the paperwork to make sure the address was right,” Davis says.

After an appeal to the bank and a four-week wait, a new appraiser was sent to Davis’ house. This time, she removed everything in the house that identified the race of the couple. But she didn’t stop there. She also asked an elderly, white, male neighbor to step in as the homeowner.

This time the appraisal came back at $645,000—about 29% more than the initial valuation. This was the appraisal they used.

“That [first appraiser] essentially tried to steal at least $150,000 worth of wealth from my family,” says Davis “That is life-changing money that would have been snatched out from under us had we not contested and had we not been able to navigate the system the way that we did.”

The federally funded Fair Housing report, released in January 2022, found that “homes in majority Black neighborhoods were valued 23% lower than properties in mostly White neighborhoods, even after controlling for home features and neighborhood amenities.”

Davis and her husband did file a complaint with the bank and were told the original appraiser would be flagged in its system. But that didn’t address the emotional and mental toll that the process took on the couple.

“People need to be aware this is what [fair housing] means today,” says Davis. “This is why these things matter.”

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