Prevent Disability Discrimination and Promote Fair Housing

The Fair Housing Act prohibits housing discrimination based on seven protected classes: race, color, national origin, religion, familial status, disability, and sex (including gender identity and sexual orientation).

Allegations of disability discrimination were more than half of all complaints in 2021, according to data from the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA). “One reason for this is that discrimination against persons with disabilities is easier to detect, as it most often occurs as an overt denial of a request for a reasonable accommodation or modification to the housing unit,” says NFHA’s 2022 Fair Housing Trends Report.

How can real estate professionals help prospects, clients, and tenants with disabilities receive the same access to fair housing as everyone else? Rachel Cohen-Miller, Supervising Attorney at Disability Rights Texas, told Texas REALTOR® magazine what the advocacy organization was seeing in the field and what agents, brokers, and property managers can do to help.

“A lot of people don’t know that there are actually laws that protect against discrimination,” she says. “We talk to folks about fair housing, and they tell us, ‘I had no idea this exists.’ On a practical level, many people don’t understand what discrimination looks like. The basics about what is fair housing are not common knowledge.”

Understanding Disability Discrimination

NFHA reports that complaints related to rental properties are 82% of all complaints to public agencies and private fair housing organizations. “This is due primarily to the fact that rental transactions are the most frequent type of housing transaction, and the simplicity of the transaction can make it easier to identify or suspect discrimination,” the NFHA report says.

Disability discrimination often takes the form of tenants’ reasonable accommodations and modifications being denied, Cohen-Miller says.

Examples of reasonable accommodations and modifications can include assistance animals, ground-floor units, accessible parking spaces, grab bars installed in bathrooms, alternative methods to submit housing applications, and adjusting a rent payment schedule for people receiving income assistance.

Many times, tenants ask and landlords grant reasonable accommodations and modifications. However, Cohen-Miller says that the requests sometimes end up in a fight.

An apartment complex may deny a request from a tenant with mobility impairments to move from the third floor to the first. Perhaps a tenant with a disability asks for the rent payment date to be moved because the tenant’s Social Security check arrives on the fifth or sixth of the month. “Landlords are denying that left and right,” she says.

Disability Rights Texas has been doing a lot of work recently on cases regarding tenants with mental illness. Perhaps a tenant with a mental illness has an anxiety attack and shuts the door on a building representative. “Landlords are trying to evict people for stuff like that,” she says.

In that case, a reasonable accommodation could be conducting business through email, or giving tenants more advance notice before visiting or showing the property to other potential tenants or buyers. Sometimes communicating in person is difficult; it could be easier to work together in writing, she says. “People with disabilities have to understand that asking to do business over email is an accommodation that can be had.”

Habitability is also a significant concern, Cohen-Miller says. “There’s a lot of flooding in Texas. When these multifamily units aren’t remediating issues, you start to see mold. It’s more and more widespread,” she says.

Tenants, especially children, may develop breathing problems and asthma. Sometimes landlords do not want to remediate mold issues, she says. “I understand it’s expensive to fix, but there needs to be a middle ground for addressing these issues in a timely way,” Cohen-Miller says.

For people with disabilities, discrimination issues are compounded by affordability challenges in markets across the state, she adds. “In the back of their minds, many people with disabilities are thinking, ‘I don’t want to lose my housing, because I can’t find anything else.’”

The nature of the rental market itself can also pose obstacles. “These are not mom-and-pop operations running many of these multifamily units,” she says. “In many cases, these are corporations from out of state and sometimes out of the country.”

Solutions for Real Estate Professionals

Training is essential for anyone working with the public on housing issues, she says.

“We are seeing a lot of turnover in the front offices of these companies managing multifamily units,” Cohen-Miller says. “The new staff are not being trained in the Fair Housing Act. So staff at these apartment complexes are discriminating against clients. Then we talk to the folks at the management level and they have no idea. When they realize what’s going on, they fix the problem. Reasonable accommodations and modifications are basic stuff. If you get trained on it, you understand. But it’s hard to train with a steady influx of new staff.”

Texas REALTORS® offers several courses on fair housing and related topics. To register for upcoming sessions, visit texasrealestate.com/findacourse.

Ask questions if you don’t understand. Reach out to your broker, subject matter experts, or impartial state and federal resources. Cohen-Miller says it’s easier to have public-facing staff handle issues with understanding and respect than it is to clean up issues later.

“If real estate brokers and managers could take away one thing, it’s to train your staff and your agents,” she says. “Understand that accommodations exist. There are reasons to grant reasonable accommodations and modifications. If people are trained, it’s less work for others. It’s less work as a whole.”

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Read HUD and DOJ’s guidance on reasonable accommodations and modifications

hud.gov/sites/dfiles/FHEO/documents/huddojstatement.pdf
And
hud.gov/sites/dfiles/FHEO/documents/reasonable_modifications_mar08.pdf