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Homeownership in Assessments of Fair Housing

Across the United States, Black and Latinx families are far less likely to own their residences than white families—and the gap has increased over the past few decades. The 1968 Fair Housing Act requires the federal government to affirmatively further fair housing (AFFH), with the goal of ending discrimination and achieving equitable access to housing—including […]

Reports & Research

Privacy, Technology, and Fair Housing – A Case for Corporate and Regulatory Action

What would you do if you discovered that your application for a mortgage or a rental unit was rejected—and that the denial was due to discrimination? You could, if motivated, appeal the decision with the bank or landlord, file a complaint with your local fair housing center, or hire an attorney to seek a remedy […]

Reports & Research

2023 Fair Housing Trends Report

The 2023 Fair Housing Trends Report is the latest in a series of annual reports about fair housing trends that NFHA has produced since the mid-1990s. The data compiled in this report is from fair housing complaints in 2022. Use the visualization below to see how your state fared. 

Reports & Research

THE BAD HOUSING BLUES: Discrimination in the Housing Choice Voucher Program in Memphis, TN

Memphis, Tennessee has a long history of racial bias and economic inequality, and often, these forces have worked hand in-hand. Memphis is where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. traveled to stand with Black sanitation workers in protest of inequitable wages and unsafe working conditions in April 1968. While it has been 54 years since Dr. […]

Reports & Research

2022 Fair Housing Trends Report

This 2022 Fair Housing Trends Report is the latest in a series of annual reports about fair housing trends that NFHA has produced since the mid-1990s. The most important finding of this report is that the number of housing discrimination complaints increased significantly in 2021, despite the fact there were fewer agencies reporting complaint data. […]

Reports & Research

Identifying Bias and Barriers, Promoting Equity: An Analysis of the USPAP Standards and Appraiser Qualifications Criteria

The appraiser has the power to determine the value of a mortgage borrower’s most important financial asset, which can hold the key to determining whether that borrower’s family can purchase a permanent home rather than rent, access credit on reasonable terms, or build wealth for their family and generations to come. Over time, Americans have […]

Reports & Research

An AI Fair Lending Policy Agenda for the Federal Financial Regulators

Algorithms, including artificial intelligence and machine learning models (AI/ML), increasingly dictate many core aspects of everyday life. Whether applying for a job or a loan, renting an apartment, or seeking insurance coverage, AI-powered statistical models decide who will have access to the foundational drivers of opportunity and equality.

Reports & Research

2021 Fair Housing Trends Report

The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) has produced a report since the mid-1990s about the fair housing trends of the prior year. Over the years, the seven to 10 page report turned into a 100+ page treatise on myriad fair housing issues and trends. In 2021, NFHA has determined it will release information in a […]

Reports & Research

Where You Live Matters: Access to Key Amenities is Worse in Communities of Color

Majority-white areas have more traditional finance outlets (banks, credit unions and mortgage lenders), more fitness and health services and fewer alternative finance establishments (check-cashing, payday lenders, pawn shops etc). Across the ten metros and the business categories analyzed, Baltimore, Detroit, Oakland, and Philadelphia in particular had some of the widest gaps in access to amenities […]

Reports & Research

Criteria for a Targeted Down Payment Assistance Program

According to the 2019 American Community Survey, homeownership among Black families is 30 percentage points below that of white families—a larger gap than existed in 1968 when the Fair Housing Act was passed. The disparity in homeownership rates is a large driver of the enormous racial wealth gap, with the median Black family having 13 […]

Reports & Research

Protecting Homeownership From the Impact of COVID-19

During and after the Great Recession, almost eight million homeowners nationwide lost their homes to foreclosure. While vacant and abandoned homes blighted many neighborhoods throughout the country, tight access to credit locked many prospective owner-occupants out of the market. As a result, foreclosed properties were overwhelmingly sold to investors, and ultimately more than five million […]

Reports & Research

Special Purpose Credit Programs

There is an increasing consensus that creditors must do more to address lending disparities for people of color. Director Kraninger of the Consumer Financial ProtectionBureau (CFPB) has promised steps to “help create real and sustainable changes in our financial system so that African Americans and other minorities have equal opportunities to build wealth and close […]

Reports & Research

2020 Fair Housing Trends Report

This report was not supposed to be about the COVID-19 pandemic. It was supposed to be about fair housing trends in 2019. However, how could we not address the COVID-19 crisis when it illuminated the great disparities at the heart of every fair housing trends report ever released by NFHA? The adverse COVID health outcomes […]

Reports & Research

Fair Housing Solutions: Overcoming Real Estate Sales Discrimination

On November 17, 2019, Newsday released a scathing report detailing an investigation into the nature and extent of real estate sales practices on Long Island in New York. The report, entitled Long Island Divided, was the culmination of a three-and-a-half year comprehensive investigation entailing 240 hours of secretly recorded meetings with real estate agents and […]

Reports & Research

2019 Fair Housing Trends Report

The Fair Housing Act is under attack from the very agency charged with enforcing it—the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). There is no plainer way to state it. The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) and other civil rights partners have been vigilant in beating back these attacks, underscoring the unequivocal necessity of […]

Reports & Research

2018 Fair Housing Trends Report

Imagine the house you grew up in, the local pool you swam in, shopping in a grocery store full of fresh fruits and vegetables, the great school you attended with your friends, and the doctor nearby who took care of you when you were sick. That’s how all of us would like to remember our […]

Reports & Research

Discrimination When Buying a Car: How The Color of Your Skin Can Affect Your Car-Shopping Experience

Transportation is all about connecting people to the places they need to go—work, school, the grocery store, recreation, places of worship, the library, the bank, the doctor, or elsewhere. Some people may live in high opportunity neighborhoods, where all of these amenities exist within walking distance, but most of us require some other form of […]

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2017 Fair Housing Trends Report

If there is one key thing to be learned from this report, it is that we did not get here by accident. By “here,” we mean a nation segregated largely along racial and ethnic lines, with opportunities in abundance in some communities and severely or wholly lacking in others. Children do not go to lower […]

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2016 Fair Housing Trends Report

These were the words spoken by former Vice President and Senator Walter Mondale, one of the original sponsors of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, on September 1, 2015, as he reflected on the events in Ferguson, Baltimore, and other cities that demonstrated with such devastation how continued segregation undermines equal opportunity and harms our country.

Reports & Research

Investing in Inclusive Communities: How Fair Housing Organizations Foster Diverse and Stable Neighborhoods Using the Federal Fair Housing Act.

Since the advent of the housing crisis in 2008, approximately 5.8 million homes across the country have been lost to foreclosure. Although many housing markets have since recovered from the collapse of U.S. home prices, the recovery has been uneven, and many communities throughout the nation have been stripped of wealth and equity. Many communities […]

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2015 Fair Housing Trends Report

The Fair Housing Act both prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, and disability status, and makes it the policy of the United States to promote residential integration.4 This year, HUD plans to release a long-overdue regulation to clearly define the provision in the Fair Housing Act which […]

Reports & Research

Discrimination by Banks in the Maintenance of Homes in Communities of Color Remains a Barrier to Recovery

Since the beginning of the housing crisis in 2008, approximately 5.8 million homes across the country have been lost to foreclosure. A significant number of these homes completed the foreclosure process and were repossessed by the bank, becoming bank or lender owned (these properties are also referred to as Real Estate Owned properties or REOs). […]

Reports & Research

Zipcode Inequality

In the past few years, banks and the federal government have attempted through counseling, short sales, deeds-in-lieu and principal reduction to cut down on the number of foreclosures that complete the process and become bank-owned (also known as Real Estate Owned or REO properties). Despite these efforts, vacant REO properties still exist in record numbers […]

Reports & Research

2014 Fair Housing Trends Report

2013 was a banner year for the fair housing movement with bold moves by HUD, DOJ, and private non-profit fair housing organizations to promote diverse, inclusive communities in our nation. In recent years, there has been a sea change in the federal government’s approach to fair housing, with an emphasis on broad-based systemic actions rather […]

Reports & Research

2013 Fair Housing Trends Report

April 11, 2013 marks the 45th anniversary of the passage of the Fair Housing Act – hard-fought legislation intended to root out individual and systemic housing discrimination and segregation, and to promote diverse inclusive communities throughout the United States.

Reports & Research

Are You Listening Now?: Housing Discrimination Against the Deaf and Hard of Hearing

Deaf and hard of hearing individuals face a variety of obstacles when interacting with the hearing world. One of those impediments is discriminatory treatment by housing providers that precludes equal access to housing opportunities. The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), in cooperation with eleven of its member organizations, conducted a national investigation of rental practices […]

Reports & Research

Discriminatory Effects of Credit Scoring on Communities of Color

Our current credit scoring systems have a disparate impact on people and communities of color. These systems are rooted in our long history of housing discrimination and the dual credit market that resulted from it. Moreover, many credit scoring mechanisms include factors that do not just assess the risk characteristics of the borrower; they also […]

Reports & Research

2012 Fair Housing Trends Report

In 30 years, people of color will constitute the majority of the United States population. U.S. Census data from 2010 found that almost half of all babies born in the United States today belong to a racial or ethnic “minority” group, i.e. anyone not counted by the Census as non Hispanic, single-race whites. In many […]

Reports & Research

The Banks are Back, Our Neighborhoods are Not

As the foreclosure crisis continues to affect 1 in 69 households across the United States, or roughly 2.7 million families in 2011, banks are repossessing an unprecedented number of properties. As a result, a related properties mar once vibrant, well-maintained neighborhoods. But this problem has not affected all neighborhoods equally. This report documents an alarming […]

Reports & Research

Study of the Fair Housing Initiatives Program

This evaluation of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) Fair Housing Initiative Program (FHIP) is the first major study of the program in 15 years. The study confirms that FHIP funding is a critical component of the U.S. civil rights enforcement infrastructure. Fair housing organizations in communities across the country depend on […]

Reports & Research

2011 Fair Housing Trends Report

As the nation continues to reel from the foreclosure and economic crises, private non-profit fair housing organizations are taking stock of their communities. They are evaluating what went right, what went wrong, and what needs to happen next.

Reports & Research

Here Comes the Bank, There Goes Our Neighborhood

Discriminatory practices rampant in America’s housing market have driven our nation’s foreclosure crisis. Already, a robust body of research has revealed that African-American and Latino borrowers received a disproportionate share of highcost subprime loans, often when they qualified for better, more sustainable loans. Further research demonstrates that foreclosures are not evenly distributed throughout our country’s […]

Reports & Research

2010 Fair Housing Trends Report

2009 saw a rocky road for the fair housing movement. Advocates achieved significant success affirmatively furthering fair housing, epitomized by the successful resolution of the fair housing litigation against Westchester County, New York and by the administration’s dedication to promoting integrated communities, yet the foreclosure crisis and its many civil rights implications continued to temper […]

Reports & Research

2009 Fair Housing Trends Report

Since the passage of the Fair Housing Act over forty years ago, we have made some progress towards advancing fair housing, residential integration and equal opportunity goals. Yet the challenges of discrimination remain with us. What we have as a result is ongoing residential segregation that results in disparities in access to quality education, employment, […]

Reports & Research

An Examination of Civil Rights Issues with Respect to the Mortgage Crisis

The foreclosure and financial crisis and its impact on the global economy have been at the forefront of the country’s domestic and foreign policy issues. What has been greatly overlooked, in the federal government’s legislative and administrative reaction to and the media reports about this crisis, is its roots in the historical discriminatory housing and […]

Reports & Research

The Future of Fair Housing

That “inescapable network of mutuality” described by Martin Luther King, Jr. begins in our communities. Where we live shapes our lives, our interactions with others, our work life, our health, and our education. Each of us has a role to play in creating communities that are welcoming, safe, and open to all. Today, this goal […]

Reports & Research

The Future of Fair Housing: Executive Summary

That “inescapable network of mutuality” described by Martin Luther King, Jr. begins in our communities. Where we live shapes our lives, our interactions with others, our work life, our health, and our education. Each of us has a role to play in creating communities that are welcoming, safe, and open to all. Today, this goal […]

Reports & Research

2008 Fair Housing Trends Report

This year, we commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the Fair Housing Act and the twentieth anniversary of the Fair Housing Amendments Act. We commemorate, not celebrate, because we are still so far from achieving the balanced and integrated living patterns envisioned by the original Act’s authors. While we have made some progress in reducing levels […]

Reports & Research

2007 Fair Housing Trends Report

In this first decade of the twenty‐first century, when the attention of so many faces outward toward the international world, Americans find themselves confronting a dire crisis right here at home. With four out of every five families making their home in a metropolitan area, the persistent unequal distribution of residential opportunities within our cities […]

Reports & Research

Still No Home for the Holidays: A Report on the State of Housing and Housing Discrimination in the Gulf Coast Region

Over a year has elapsed since the hurricanes of 2005 wrought destruction and devastation on the Gulf Coast, yet countless numbers of evacuees remain unable to return home. Today, the region continues to undergo extensive repair and rebuilding but many people remain displaced, without stable long-term housing and usually struggling to make mortgage or homeowners […]

Reports & Research

2006 Fair Housing Trends Report

Even as a growing U.S. population becomes more diverse, our communities remain highly racially and ethnically segregated, and segregation continues to extract a high price in economic and societal terms. Segregation in our neighborhoods and communities weakens the overall infrastructure, results in a drain on the tax base and minimizes the capacity of local officials […]

Reports & Research

No Home for the Holidays: Report on Housing Discrimination Against Hurricane Katrina Survivors

In response to concerns of housing discrimination against persons forced to evacuate because of Hurricane Katrina, NFHA conducted an investigation of rental housing practices in five states to determine whether victims of Hurricane Katrina would be treated unfairly based on their race.

Reports & Research

2005 Fair Housing Trends Report

The 2005 Fair Housing Trends Report is based on 2004 housing discrimination complaint data compiled from National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) member agencies nationwide, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and state and local government agencies. NFHA has collected this type of data on an annual […]

Reports & Research

2004 Fair Housing Trends Report

The 2004 Fair Housing Trends Report is based on 2003 complaint data compiled from National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) member agencies nationwide, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and 95 state and local government agencies. NFHA has collected this type of data on an annual basis […]

Reports & Research

2003 Fair Housing Trends Report

The 2003 Fair Housing Trends Report is based on 2002 complaint data compiled from National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) member agencies nationwide, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and 95 state and local government agencies. NFHA has collected this type of data on an annual basis […]