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.

Requiring Men to Mow the Lawn Doesn't Cut It

The manager of an Idaho property settled a case with the Department of Justice (DOJ) for his alleged sex discrimination under the Fair Housing Act. According to the DOJ complaint, the property manager refused to rent a single-family house to a single mother, her children, and a female friend because the manager had a bad experience with a single mother and her children who didn't care for their yard or perform other maintenance on another rental house he managed.

The consent decree, which a federal court entered on August 10, 2005, required the property manager to send the single mother $5,000 along with a written apology. He also agreed to take other steps to ensure fair housing compliance going forward, including replacing "husband's employment" and "wife's employment" with "if applicable, spouse's employment" on his rental application.

Did the property manager get off easy? Or was the settlement too harsh?

What do you think?