If you have any calls or concerns regarding fair housing rights within Northern Alabama, please call our office at (205) 324-0111 or come see us at 1820 7th Avenue N., Suite 110 Birmingham, AL 35203
A Note from the Executive Director
Greetings!
The Fair Housing Center of Northern Alabama (FHCNA) has been very busy. In addition to assisting victims of housing discrimination, we have provided training to a number of housing authorities in our service area and multi-family management companies. To highlight a few other activities, we provide fair housing information to participants of Neighborhood Housing Services and the Birmingham Urban League’s first-time homebuyers monthly seminars. FHCNA presented on a panel sponsored by the Huntsville Board of Realtors during Fair Housing Month. I was interviewed on WBRC-Chanel 6 News and have also participated in radio interviews. FHCNA was a contributor to the Turkey Classic Give-away sponsored by Cumulus Media. We have continued our fair housing billboard displays in most of our 29 counties service area. The Latino News continues to reach more than 75% of our service area.
April is National Fair Housing Month, and the center sponsored its Annual Fair Housing Month Seminar and Luncheon at the beautiful Birmingham Botanical Gardens. Sessions relative to issues such as appraisal bias, reasonable accommodations, affirmatively furthering fair housing and other general fair housing topics were covered. Our speakers represented the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Justice, Governor’s Office on Disability Rights, Department of Community Development, Huntsville, Alabama, the National Fair Housing Alliance and two experts on appraisal bias, Ira Goldstein from Policy Solutions at Reinvestment Fund and Rachel Meadows, Director of Policy and Legislation, City of Philadelphia. The Fair Housing Education and Outreach Specialist presented awards to the top three students who participated in our fair housing poster contest. They attended Hatton High School in Town Creek, Alabama, and Meek High School in Arley, Alabama. There was a total of 51 virtual poster entries, just under 4,000 votes, and over 40,000 views of the online contest.
Additional activities have included a presentation to One Roof members, attendance at the Birmingham Realtist Association activities, and the Building Alabama Reinvestment Conference. FHCNA is represented on several local boards ensuring we take an active part in community activities. I am privileged to serve on the Board of Trustees for the Alabama Center for Real Estate at the University of Alabama, and also serve on the board of the Consumer Financial Education Foundation of America. I am pleased to say that I have also been elected to serve another term on the Board of Directors of the National Fair Housing Alliance, Washington, DC.
We take pride in our community services in our efforts to affirmatively further fair housing, however, we accomplish our goals when we resolve acts of housing discrimination. Keeping families in their homes despite the efforts of landlords to illegally evict them based upon discrimination, informing landlords of their discriminatory acts when they deny reasonable accommodation requests to qualified persons, denying occupancy to families with children that are otherwise qualified, denying occupancy to persons with criminal backgrounds regardless of type of crime and number of years since incarceration, evicting women who have been impacted by domestic violence regardless of the circumstances, refusing to change policies that would address source of income, these are all examples of discriminatory acts that negatively impact our communities. We work to resolve these issues daily.
To support our work, we conduct tests to uncover acts of discrimination. Our testers conducted 58 race-based tests, 2 disability and 1 familial status test. Of that total, 20 were rental, 21 sales, 7 lending and 10 design and construction tests. 2 tests were based on rental complaints and 2 on reasonable accommodation complaints. We investigated 39 complaints by Blacks or African Americans, 12 by whites, 1 Hispanic, 2 who identified as other and 19 disability complaints. These numbers only reflect individual complaints and do not include the numbers of people or households impacted. This also does not include the hundreds of landlord/tenant calls and complaints we have received and the numerous referrals we make to other agencies.
This has been a busy year and a successful one. Several of our complainants received monetary settlements, housing units were opened, company policies changed, reasonable accommodation requests granted, evictions stopped, and numerous other solutions achieved.
If you are interested in assisting us in the eradication of housing discrimination and would like more information about our program, please visit us or call the center. We will provide printed materials or speak with you. We distributed more than 10,000 fair housing brochures in English and Spanish and will provide Braille upon request. If your organization or company is interested in a fair housing presentation or training, give us a call. Our services to the general public are free.
Fair Housing in the News
HUD Issues Memo Clarifying
Recommended Practices Regarding
Persons with Criminal Backgrounds
In the summer of 2022, HUD issued a memo authored by Demetria McCain, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, which gives guidance about best practices for applying Fair Housing protections to people with criminal backgrounds.
Although people with conviction histories are not considered a 'protected class,' the disproportionate impact of the legal system on Black and Latino people and people with disabilities means that HUD recognizes criminal background screenings may violate the Fair Housing Act. Using an overly broad or unfair screening process to people with a criminal history is often a major impediment to them obtaining housing - a critical step to successful reentry.
The number of people in this category is staggering. According to FBI statistics, 70 million people in our country have criminal backgrounds - that's roughly 1 in 3 people. For clarity, not all of that number have been convicted of a crime. That distinction is an example of how people might be unfairly excluded from housing options since people are often automatically disqualified because of their experience with the carceral system even if their arrest did not result in a conviction.
To make matters worse, according to the DOJ, "More than 650,000 ex-offenders are released from prison every year, and studies show that approximately two-thirds will likely be rearrested within three years of release." Helping these folks find stable housing will go a long way to reversing this trend and HUD's new guidelines are a good start.
For more information click the link to HUD's memorandum and/or the digital toolkit called, "Fair Housing for People with Criminal Records" put together by The Fair Housing Center for Rights & Research a not-for-profit fair housing agency that promotes equal housing opportunities and positive race relations in Northeast Ohio.
Lila Hackett