Printer-friendly version
By Isabel Dominguez, Outreach Coordinator at CSA San Diego
April 21, 2024 (San Diego) -- Imagine you are in search of affordable housing for yourself, and you come across a home that happens to check all of your boxes. You love the neighborhood, it’s in your price range, and has the perfect amount of room for you. As you become certain about this decision, the housing provider refuses to negotiate and tells you that it is no longer available despite it still being listed.
The Fair Housing Act protects various classes of individuals from facing discrimination from a housing provider. This act prevents landlords and real estate companies from being discriminatory towards a person’s race, color, national origin, familial status, sex, religion, or disability. It protects them in all aspects of housing whether it be renting, buying, seeking housing assistance, or getting a mortgage.
The Fair Housing Act supplies an approach for victims of housing discrimination to file a complaint or lawsuit after getting necessary proof of the housing provider’s discriminatory actions. There are cases where an individual might not know they’re being discriminated against as some housing providers will lie and claim that there are no units available or steering into a different neighborhood. The refusal to sell, rent, or lease any type of housing if based on a protected characteristic is considered discriminatory. This includes refusal to negotiate a sale or in any case, outright refuses to work with an individual due to their biases.
Examples of a housing provider being discriminatory can be refusing to let an individual rent a unit because of the color of their skin or their race. This can also be a landlord refusing to rent to someone who has children or is in a wheelchair. If a housing provider treats an individual different from the rest of the potential tenants, this is in violation of the fair housing act.
This law goes further into protecting tenants from landlords treating them unfairly while already living in a unit. Under the Fair Housing Act, landlords are unable to provide an individual with different facilities or set up new terms for one group of people. The refusal of a housing provider to arrange all the necessary accommodations of a disabled person violates the Fair Housing Act. This law is set in place to cover all means of treating individuals differently based on characteristics they do not control.
The Fair Housing Act is further meant to accommodate and bring equal housing opportunity to all groups of people. The State of California considers more protected classes then the Federally recognized ones. These other classes include gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, military status, medical condition, ancestry, and age. An individual is not allowed to be turned away from housing based on any of those characteristics.
These situations are not always obvious, and an individual may never realize they were being treated differently by a housing provider. It is crucial that every person is aware of their individual rights to protect themselves if a situation of discrimination should ever occur.
If you or anyone you know believes you are experiencing discrimination on the basis of any of the protected classes, please reach out to CSA San Diego. A nonprofit organization built on emphasizing fair housing laws through programs, advocacy, and providing services that actively work against discrimination in housing. Visit C4SA.org to find out more or call at (619) 444-5700.
CSA San Diego invites you to our Fair Housing presentation on May 1 at 5;30 p.m. in the Spring Valley Library. Details on this free event, and how to RSVP, are here: https://www.eastcountymagazine.org/know-your-rights-tenant-fair-housing-presentation-may-1-spring-valley
Recent comments