Topic: Other Issues

Amid the coronavirus crisis and the gridlock in Washington, it’s hard to predict where we’re headed in this election year. Given the uncertainty about what’s going to happen on the national level, it seems like a good time to look at some recent major developments in fair housing law on the state and local level.

In this lesson, the Coach spotlights recent news of settlements reached in fair housing cases. The amounts reportedly paid are sometimes staggering—which is news in and of itself—and show just how much it can cost to resolve fair housing complaints. But the real news is in the backstory, the events that led to a complaint against the community. It’s there that you can learn what, if anything, the community could have done to avoid the problem in the first place, or once the problem arose, to prevent it from escalating into a formal fair housing complaint.

The Coach wraps up 2015 with a review of all the lessons covered this year. Keep it handy—it’s a quick refresher on top fair housing concerns and a helpful index to the full lessons, all of which are available to review online or download from FairHousingCoach.com. And you’ll also find quiz questions—with links to the answers—so you can see how much you’ve learned.

In this Special Issue, Fair Housing Coach spotlights the new Supreme Court ruling on fair housing law and what it may mean for your community.

This month, the Coach takes a look at recent trends—and what they may mean for your fair housing program. The big news is a U.S. Supreme Court case on whether federal fair housing law imposes liability for discrimination based on disparate impact—that is, when a housing practice has a discriminatory effect on a protected class, even when there’s no intent to discriminate. A ruling in the case, expected later this year, has the potential to significantly change the legal landscape in fair housing law.