The National Fair Housing Alliance

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The National Fair Housing Alliance is a 20-year-old organization dedicated to ending discrimination in housing and supporting the 40-year-old Fair Housing Act. The National Fair Housing Alliance works in several key areas to make sure that everyone can secure a home without confronting discrimination.

These areas include education and training for other organizations dedicated to fair housing; investigation of discrimination complaints against rental companies, insurance agencies, rental properties and real estate brokers, and public policy and regulatory advocacy. This broad focus ensures that subtler forms of housing discrimination, those achieved by unfair lending practices and other secondary services to the housing market, are also the subject of enforcement and prevention.

The organization is actually a consortium of 220 non-profit fair housing organizations, as well as regional civil rights agencies and individuals committed to the organization's cause. While racial discrimination in housing is the issue The National Fair Housing Alliance talks about most prominently, because of America's history on race issues, they address all forms of housing discrimination including discrimination against people with disabilities.

A recent case the organization has been involved in has been against AG Spanos, a major design and construction firm accused of not developing fully accessible properties since 1991. That case is still in progress, but small victories have already been achieved, with the judge refusing a motion from the defendant to dismiss the complaint.

The National Fair Housing Alliance also provides resources for individuals and communities that may be experiencing problems with housing discrimination. The organization produces materials on fighting hate crimes, which are crimes which are defined by the FBI as targeting someone or their property for damage of violence because of their race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or disability status, as this type of criminal activity is often connected with housing discrimination. It's indicative of neighborhood tensions that often play out in a desire to control or limit diversity in a given area. These materials provide information on how to navigate the legal system in such cases.

The online resources of the National Fair Housing association also provide detailed information on landmark fair housing cases, the text of federal fair housing regulations including those on community reinvestment and fair and equal lending practices, as well as an overview of the federal agencies involved in enforcing fair housing and their specific responsibilities and contact information. The National Fair Housing Alliance gives you the information you need to be your own fair housing advocate.

Currently the National Fair Housing Association is particularly active as related to the sub-prime mortgage crisis in America. It is working to prevent foreclosures, preserve neighborhood diversity and make sure that fair housing regulations are not overlooked in the financial chaos.

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