Federal fair housing law

The Real Estate Dictionary topic of the day is Fair housing:

The Real Estate Dictionary believes that Fair Housing is the most important aspect of real estate to learn. Fair housing was created in 1968 in response to the overwhelming demand in America for equal rights to buy, rent, or advertise real estate without unfair treatment based on an individuals class.
Classes are simply a grouping of different types of individuals. The following classes or individuals that are protected under the fair housing amendment are race, religion (aka creed), sex, national origin, handicap, and familial status.
Most of these classes are easy to define based on simply the word that describes the class. There are two that are not so simple. The first is handicap. Handicap classification is defined as a person limited because of physical or mental capacity to function or make decisions. In order for a person to be protected under the fair housing they must have the handicap acknowledged by a doctor or a legal court. Handicapped persons are allowed to update a place they are renting at their own financial burdeon.
The second is familial status. In order for to be considered under this classification there must be one adult and one child that is under 18 years of age. Understand that a family can be refused rental if they are trying to rent a property that does not have adequate space. An example of this would be a parent with three kids trying to rent a one bedroom apartment.
There are certain situations where the fair housing laws do not apply. The three situations are an owner with three or less properties, not using a broker, and an owner who not discriminate in advertising. What all this means is that if a person does not buy and sell or rent homes for a living hence the three or less properties, does not use a broker to sell the home, and does not discriminate when they advertise the property for rent or sale, they can chose to rent or sell to whoever they want.
Another type that is exempt from fair housing laws is an multi family unit building of 4 units or less that is owner occupied. A multi family unit is basically one big house that is converted into 4 separate little apartments. Important very important the unit must be owner occupied which makes it less then four properties.
Religious organizations are also exempt from fair housing. In order for them to be exempt they must rent or sell to people only of that religion and the property can not be commercial. What commercial means is opening a restaurant for example and saying only Christians allowed.
Private clubs such as a golfing club are also exempt from fair housing as long as they remain private and are not commercial real estate.
******Multi-family properties that were constructed before the year 1992 must have handicap access defined within the amendment. This is called reasonable access. Reasonable would be something like getting a parking space zoned as handicap not constructing an elevator for a person.
Properties that were constructed after 1992 must have fair access for everyone. This means things such as elevators or access suitable for a wheelchair to enter like a ramp.
Familial status does not have to be acknowledged when the housing is for a retirement community which requires all residents to be over the age of 62 years old. It is important to understand that communities like this require special licenses, and you can’t just decide your only going to rent to people over that age to exclude families or African Americans for example.
Besides the exemptions listed it is 100% illegal to refuse to rent, sell, or even refuse to talk about selling or renting to people of a protected class. It is also illegal to increase the rent on a protected class because they are that class. If you are renting or selling you can not advertise one type of contract and then change the terms for the protected class. A simple example of this would be offering rent at $500.00 per month to everyone and then offering $600.00 a month rent to a protected class.
There are certain activities that are prohibited in fair housing and they have catchy names. These activities are blockbusting, steering, and redlining.
Block busting is convincing owners to sell because a protected class is moving to the neighborhood. An example would be convincing white people to move because of African Americans coming to the neighborhood.
Steering is intentionally not showing real estate to a protected class. This would be say a real estate agent telling a white person they will not be a good fit in Compton, California. So they say lets go look in Hollywood instead.
Redlining is not approving loans or decreasing the number of loans to protected classes within a certain area. An example would be if a bank says we can only give out 5 loans this year for black people in Hollywood.
Fair housing is enforced in three different ways. Federal fair housing laws, state fair housing laws, and local fair housing laws. Federal is managed by housing of urban development (HUD), state is managed by individual state agencies, and local is managed by whatever local entity they have in place.
If you are a protected class that feels these rights have been breached, you can file a complaint with each of the agencies and the agency with the strictest regulations are the rules of that area that must be followed. What this means is that if a state has tighter restrictions on fair housing a person can not just follow the federal law, they are in violation if they do not follow the stricter law. Hopefully by now you have a good idea what federal fair housing is.


The Real Estate Dictionary has discovered a site that you can visit to file a complaint you can go directly to the site by clicking this link to the HUD websiteHome