This website is intended to help educate people about housing discrimination so that they may acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to be educated housing consumers, and to know their rights and responsibilities as home owners/renters. This project is designed to be used as a research tool for people wanting to learn about housing discrimination, and to provide resources at national, state, and local levels for people who feel that they may have been discriminated against.
Since the Fair Housing Act was signed into law in 1968, great progress has been made towards providing protections against discrimination to groups who were, for years, denied equal access to housing. These protections have helped thousands of people to fight acts of discrimination every year since 1968, and continue to become stronger as we learn more about the various ways in which discrimination occurs. Despite this progress, however, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) still receives up to 10,000 complaints of discrimination every year. And there is evidence to suggest that some are still susceptible to discrimination without these protections due to lack of knowledge, both by housing agents and potential tenants, as well as geographic disparities in who can receive protection from housing and civil rights authorities. In addressing this issue, this website also focuses on the geographic disparities of who has access to both protection and enforcement of the law, as well as access to knowledge about fair housing laws in Washington State.
