April 4, 2016
April is Fair Housing Month, a time when efforts are made to raise the awareness of fair housing issues and federal law that protects those seeking a place to live from discrimination.
That’s why the FHA and HUD began Fair Housing Month 2016 with the launch of a national media campaign designed to help the public, “to envision what communities with shared opportunity for all might look like. The new campaign is designed to further educate the public about their housing rights and the ideals behind HUDs new Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) initiative” according to a 1 April press release.
“The campaign, which was developed in partnership with the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), will include print Public Service Announcements (PSAs) in various languages, television PSAs in English and Spanish, online videos, and social media outreach. The campaign will run throughout 2016, and comes as the nation celebrates the 48th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act, the landmark law that was passed one week after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968.”
Every April the FHA, HUD and their partners hold activities and events to remind people of their fair housing rights, and also to highlight HUDs fair housing enforcement efforts.
A core belief of our values as Americans is the idea that every person deserves a fair chance to secure safe and stable housing, said HUD Secretary Julian Castro. Your race, how you get around, the size of your family, whether you come from another country, if you are a man or a woman, or whatever your religious beliefs are should never hinder your housing goals. I am proud of the work our fair housing staff does every day in conjunction with our state and local partners to ensure that everyones fair housing rights are honored.
Year round, the HUD Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity pursues cases against “individuals and housing providers that discriminate. Last year, HUD and its Fair Housing Assistance Program partner agencies received 8,293 complaints alleging discrimination based on one or more of the Fair Housing Acts seven protected classes: race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, and disability. During that period, the categories with the highest number of complaints were disability and race, respectively. HUD also focused on lending discrimination, as well as various forms of discrimination faced by women, families with children, and LGBT persons”.
Learn more about Fair Housing Month and your rights under the Fair Housing Act laws at the FHA/HUD official site.
Do you work in residential real estate? You should know about the free tool offered by FHA.com. It is designed especially for real estate websites; a widget that displays FHA loan limits for the counties serviced by those sites. It is simple to spend a few seconds customizing the state, counties, and widget size for the tool; you can copy the code and paste it into your website with ease. Get yours today:
http://www.fha.com/fha_loan_limits_widget
Joe Wallace has been specializing in military and personal finance topics since 1995. His work has appeared on Air Force Television News, The Pentagon Channel, ABC and a variety of print and online publications. He is a 13-year Air Force veteran and a member of the Air Force Public Affairs Alumni Association. He was Managing editor for www.valoans.com for (8) years and is currently the Associate Editor for FHANewsblog.com.
Browse by Date: