On Memorial Day, Considering Military Status Protection

Today is Memorial Day, a federal holiday when we remember the sacrifice of servicemembers who died protecting the United States. As some are surprised to learn, federal law doesn't protect servicemembers when it comes to housing discrimination.

A number of states and cities have enacted human rights laws to cover this gap in recent years. For example, Washington protects tenants and prospective tenants against discrimination based on "honorably discharged veteran or military status." Illinois, Cook County, and Chicago all go a step further and include military discharge status as a protected class.

Is it time for the Fair Housing Act to be amended to protect against discrimination based on military status? If so, would you be in favor of limiting the coverage only to current servicemembers and those who have been honorably discharged? Or is it best to leave these decisions up to individual states and municipalities?

What do you think?

Fair Housing Month: Learn the Lingo

Do you know what "steering" means? How about "blockbusting"? What's the difference between "accessibility" and "visitability"?

As housing discrimination issues have evolved over the past 42 years since the enactment of the Fair Housing Act (FHA), several words have emerged that you'll often hear in speeches or conversations, or read in texts about fair housing.

Here are two online fair housing glossaries you can use to get familiar with the definitions of common industry terms:

1. "Fair Housing Glossary," by the Idaho Fair Housing Forum, a coalition of stakeholders cooperating and collaborating to provide education and outreach opportunities through the state.


2. "Fair Housing Glossary of Terms," by the
   Interfaith Housing Center of the Northern Suburbs, a membership-based, non-profit organization fostering open communities in north suburban Chicago since 1972.

Return tomorrow for the twenty-sixth part of this special "Fair Housing Month" feature at Fairhousingblog.com.

HUD Asks Chicago, New York, and San Francisco for LGBT Testing Ideas

When an agency wants to send fair housing testers to a property, it's usually easy to pick suitable people to fill the role. For instance, to test for racial discrimination, agencies send white and minority testers and then compare their notes. If it's disability discrimination at issue, testers with and without a noticeable disability are dispatched to check for bias.

But what about finding appropriate people to test for discrimination based on sexual orientation? Because sexual orientation isn't one of the Fair Housing Act (FHA)'s protected classes, testing for this type of discrimination hasn't been performed by a federal agency, and no organization to date has attempted to test for sexual orientation discrimination in housing on a national scale.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) wants to change that, having recently announced plans to collect data on the state of sexual orientation discrimination across the United States. According to a report from BusinessWeek, HUD will first seek input from people living in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco — three cities that currently ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity — to help determine who would make good testers, what they should say, and how they should act to get landlords to express their bias, if any exists.

What's your advice to HUD? How can testers for sexual orientation discrimination be most effective? Also, do you think such a housing study is long overdue, or is it an unnecessary expenditure of taxpayer money?

What do you think?

Mezuzah Mishigas: Reasonable Accommodations for Religion?

On July 10, 2008, a federal appeals court ruled that a Chicago condominium association complied with the Fair Housing Act (FHA) in not making an exception to its “hallway rule” barring owners from placing objects outside their doors. The exception in question concerned the placing of mezuzot (the plural of mezuzah, Hebrew for “doorpost”), which are small decorative cases containing religiously significant parchment that observant Jews are widely known to affix to their doorframe.

The court ruled that the hallway rule didn’t violate the FHA because it’s “neutral with respect to religion.” In other words, the condo association’s ban covers all items without singling out religious ones or items relating to a particular religion. The court likened the request for an exception to “reasonable accommodations,” pointing out that the FHA’s requirement to make reasonable accommodations apply only to people with disabilities. There is no requirement to reasonably accommodate people based on their religion (or sex, race, or anything else) but only a requirement of equal treatment, the court said.

The dissent, however, claimed that the condo association’s refusal to make an exception in this case is, in essence, a “constructive eviction” of observant Jews, who must choose between honoring their faith and keeping their home.

Should reasonable accommodations for people based on characteristics other than disability be required under the FHA? Should the court have ordered the condo association to make the exception on the ground that, while facially neutral, the rule has a “disparate impact” on Jews? Or, should the court have required the exception because it really amounts to intentional discrimination on the part of the condo association?

What do you think?

Interesting to note:

1) By the time the lawsuit was filed, the association’s board had adopted a religious exception to the hallway rule and had instructed its staff to leave mezuzot, crucifixes, and other religious items. The plaintiffs still sued to recover damages for distress they had suffered, plus an injunction to prevent the association from reversing itself.

2) As of December 14, 2005, Chicago has an ordinance that denies a residential building authority to prevent any owner or lessee “from placing or affixing a religious sign, symbol or relic on the door, door post or entrance of an individual apartment, condominium or cooperative housing unit” unless necessary to “avoid substantial damage to property or an undue hardship to other unit owners.”

3) As of January 1, 2007, an Illinois state law requires condo associations to establish a “reasonable accommodation for religious practices, including the attachment of religiously mandated objects to the frontdoor area of a condominium unit.”