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Blatant acts of housing discrimination faced by minority home seekers continue to decline in the United States, yet more subtle forms of housing denial stubbornly persist, according to a new study just released by HUD and the Urban Institute.

Housing discrimination still plagues certain populations pushed into limited housing stock, according to a new study on segregation in the Chicago area. The Illinois Department of Human Rights commissioned the John Marshall Law School Fair Housing Legal Support Center to examine the housing landscape in the Chicago region in light of the foreclosure crisis and to identify concrete measures to affirmatively further fair housing in the Chicago metropolitan region.

Federal fair housing law bans housing discrimination against prospects, applicants, and residents because of their disability as well as the disability of anyone associated with them. The disability protections were aimed at stamping out discrimination based on “misperceptions, ignorance, and outright prejudice.”

The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) recently released its 2013 Fair Housing Trends Report, “Modernizing the Fair Housing Act for the 21st Century.”

The results of fair housing testing in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Va., is a call to action to increase fair housing education, outreach, advocacy, and enforcement, according to the Piedmont Housing Alliance (PHA).

A combined 56 percent of fair housing complaints filed in Illinois over the last decade involved discrimination based on race and national origin, with much of it targeted towards Latinos, according the Latino Policy Forum, an advocacy organization based in Chicago.

The Center for Housing Leadership at Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia, Inc. (HOME) recently released the 2011 Virginia Housing Statistics Snapshot, an annual report on the housing market in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Authored by Brian Koziol, HOME’s Housing Policy & Research Analyst, the report compiles important housing data on affordability, home ownership, income, mortgage lending, foreclosures, and housing discrimination in Virginia.

Housing discrimination occurs frequently in Seattle, according to test results recently released by the Seattle Office for Civil Rights (SOCR). According to SOCR, more than half of all properties tested showed evidence of illegal housing discrimination.

“These results confirm that housing discrimination is the reality for many people who live in Seattle,” Mayor Mike McGinn said in a statement. “That is simply not acceptable. The actions that we are taking as a response to these results will help us to become a more equitable city.”

Discriminatory online housing ads are almost always posted by people seeking roommates, and are primarily based on familial status, according to a recent study by Rigel Oliveri, an associate dean for faculty research and development and associate professor of law at the University of Missouri School of Law.

May 2011: The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) recently released its 2011 Fair Housing Trends Report, “The Big Picture: How Fair Housing Organizations Challenge Systemic and Institutionalized Discrimination.”