Complaints/Investigations

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We’ll tell you how tenant liability insurance works and outline 12 rules to ensure you get the right coverage for your own business. 

On average, 25,000 to 30,000 fair housing complaints are filed against landlords in the U.S. each year. Fueling this massive wave of litigation isn’t just the national determination to crack down on discrimination but the glut of potential plaintiffs, including not just the individual victims but also their allies, including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), state and local fair housing agencies, and nongovernment fair housing organizations (FHOs). You may think that as long as you obey all the laws, you have nothing to worry about.

A look at recent cases yields some important lessons.

It’s against the law to commit housing discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status and handicap (disability).

“Retaliation” is a fancy word for revenge. It’s a nasty action that you take to get back at somebody for doing something bad to you. In the context of fair housing, retaliation means an unfavorable action a landlord takes like rejecting a rental applicant or evicting a tenant because he complains about discrimination or exercises any of his other rights under discrimination laws.

We all know that it’s illegal for landlords to demand sexual favors or otherwise sexually harass their tenants. But it still happens all the time. And given the inherent imbalance in economic power between landlords and tenants, it’s a problem that’s unlikely to go away any time soon, especially not in low-income communities and especially during times of pandemic where so many tenants lack the wherewithal to pay their rent each month.

While the current law is unsettled, for landlords there’s much more at stake than what the law requires.

This month, the Coach takes a close look at three hot button fair housing issues that have been generating a lot of activity in the courts and federal enforcement agencies.

In this month’s lesson, the Coach discusses what to do if your community is ever accused of a fair housing violation. The stakes have never been higher as federal, state, and local fair housing agencies, along with private fair housing organizations, continue to vigorously enforce fair housing laws. Each year, HUD awards millions in grant money to fund fair housing enforcement by public and private fair housing agencies.

There’s often a lot of attention on avoiding fair housing trouble during the leasing process, but those concerns don’t end once the lease is signed. Fair housing law protects not only prospects and applicants who are denied housing, but also current and former residents who claim unfair treatment because of their race, ethnicity, or other protected class.

In this month’s lesson, the Coach reviews what happens if someone files a fair housing claim against you. It’s probably not a regular occurrence at your community, so you may be taken aback and not know what to do, particularly if you’ve never or only rarely received a formal fair housing complaint.