Entry bubble Ever Heard of Housing Discrimination?

By: Jake | April 20, 2009 | Category: Home and Family

Houses

The Department of Housing and Urban Development designates April as Fair Housing Month to spread the word about your rights when buying, renting or financing a home. This week is Fair Housing Education Week, where HUD representatives visit schools to teach children and their parents about housing discrimination.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status (including children under the age of 18 living with parents or legal custodians, pregnant women, and people securing custody of children under the age of 18), and handicap (disability) when renting, selling or financing a home. It also makes HUD the primary enforcement agency, so if you think you have a housing discrimination case, file your complaint with them. Keep in mind the law does not protect people who can't pay their rent or mortgages.

I wonder how much of a problem housing discrimination is. According to recent remarks from HUD's Secretary, there were more than 10,000 complaints of housing discrimination last year, though an older study estimates that there are 2 million instances of housing discrimination each year. I've never been discriminated against and none of my friends believed that they had been a victim of housing discrimination. Of course I wouldn't consider my friends to be a scientific sample, and most of them believed that housing discrimination would be hard to identify because it might not be overt.

So what do you think? Have you or anyone you've known been the victim of housing discrimination?

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