The fair housing act is a law that was put in place in 1968. It intended to prohibit discrimination involved in the purchase, sale, renting, or financing of both private and public housing. Discrimination based on sex, skin color, race, nationality, or religion is discouraged by the policies set under the Fair housing act. However, with the amendments made over the years, the inclusivity of fair treatment of people living with disability and avoidance of discrimination based on familial status have been factored in. The policies enacted in the FHA focuses on helping low-income earners and tenants to locate affordable and decent homes free from any form of discrimination.
The advantages of the FHA enactment are; it helped to slightly reduce residential segregation, poverty deconcentrating as well as amending the housing policy. They enforced laws of protection under the fair housing act can only be enhanced but not reduced. Shortcomings include; difficulty to completely end these discriminations which are hard to prove because legal cases involved require patience and proper documentation. The fair housing act policies, accelerated the racial and socio-economic divide whereby whites isolated inner cities for minority groups, leaving out the have nots unattended to (Tighe et al, 2017). Efforts to curb discrimination have, however, proved less fruitful as the practice is still persistent and probably more intense than before
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Fair housing act does not balance equities between the involved parties because it allows bias on individual homeowners and agencies. The kind of loans being granted to the whites in the suburbs was affected. FHA also created bias based on race and income by increasing American's possibility for homeownership affected by the reduction of down payments, reducing interest rates for buyers, and providing standards for home construction (Tighe et al., 2017). This directly created isolation for those of low socioeconomic backgrounds.
Landlords have for the longest time discriminated against potential tenants based on race, national origin, or those with disabilities by denying them equal opportunities to access reasonable accommodation. They boast in doing this by deliberately letting out houses to preferred tenants and blocking those with a disability and other discriminatory range biases.
Implementation of the new rules regulating mortgages for home development was intended to benefit most American citizens but the result was a huge divide between the rich and the poor. This is because it benefited those that could take advantage of the fair housing act, whereas those that could not found themselves disadvantaged (Epstein, 2015). Implementation of the national housing act and the veterans' administration by the FHA was intended to provide transformation in the housing industry by ensuring long-term mortgage loans by private lenders, However, this has not been the case for it encouraged accessibility of mortgages to the upper-class citizens' single-family homeownership.
Current financing rules that encourage investment in building new structures have resulted in the settlement of the poor in low rising neighborhoods because there is little to no provision of rehabilitating old houses. They are forced to stay, for lack of better housing options hence constant subjection to security concerns, congestion, and filthy living conditions.
The fair housing act also in collaboration with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) intended to create more decent housing options for the American citizens, however, the promotion of single homeownership has greatly resulted in housing shortages of multi-family structures with the existing ones being overpriced (Schwartz, 2015). The government needs to look into the housing needs of its citizens by providing useful amendments to the FHA policies where necessary. This is to ensure a large number of American’s housing needs are met on a non-discriminatory basis.
References
Epstein, R.A. (2015). The unintended consequences of fair housing laws. https://furmancenter.org/research/iri/essay/the-unintended-consequences-of-fair-housing-laws
Schwartz, A. (2015). Housing policy in the United States: An introduction. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326793203_Housing_Policy_In_The_United_States_An_Introduction
Tighe, J. R., Hatch, M. E., & Mead, J. (2017). Source of income discrimination and fair housing policy. Journal of Planning Literature , 32 (1), 3-15. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305387897_Source_of_Income_Discrimination_and_Fair_Housing_Policy
