New Laws Redgarding Landlord Discrimination Agains Felons

A new set of guidelines from the Department of Housing and Urban Development will brand information technology tougher for landlords and home sellers to discriminate confronting applicants who have criminal backgrounds.

The guidance, announced Monday by HUD, ways that a apartment-out refusal to hire or sell to people who have criminal records is discriminatory because minorities—African Americans and Latinos in particular—are disproportionately arrested and imprisoned.

"No American should always be discriminated against because of their race or ethnicity, even if that discrimination results from a policy that appears neutral on its face," HUD Secretarial assistant Julián Castro said Monday during the National Depression Income Housing Coalition Policy Forum in Washington D.C. "Blackness and Latino Americans are unfairly arrested at significantly higher rates than white Americans."

Related: Supreme Courtroom Preserves Protections of Fair Housing Law

Under the new guidelines landlords will accept to ameliorate scrutinize whether a person was arrested and if they were also bedevilled. And, even if a person was convicted, property owners have to weigh the nature and severity of the crime and conviction when because an applicant'south housing application.

Failure to practice then might mean the homeowner could potentially confront an investigation for discrimination and, ultimately, civil penalties.

People with criminal pasts are not a protected class under the Fair Housing Act and the administration insists that in some cases it might be legal and reasonable to turn them down for housing. But landlords will accept to show their actions were washed in order to continue their property safe, Castro said.

"When landlords summarily refuse to hire to anyone who has an abort tape, they may effectively and disproportionately bar the door to millions of folks of color for no practiced reason at all," Castro said.

Housing advocates and civil rights groups hailed the move every bit a step in the correct direction.

"To accost the impact of mass incarceration, we must ensure that people leaving jails and prisons are provided access to housing opportunity," Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, an advocacy group, said in a statement . "Without access to housing opportunities, people with criminal records are placed on a path to failure and unable to take the steps necessary to successfully reintegrate into their communities. This is particularly true for African-Americans and other minorities who are overrepresented in the criminal justice system.

HUD'south new guidance follows a Supreme Court ruling from last yr which thwarted an effort to narrow the scope of the nation'south decades-one-time Fair House Deed. In a 5-4 vote, the "court acknowledges the Fair Housing Act'southward continuing role in moving the nation toward a more integrated society," the court wrote at the time. The ruling allowed an interpretation of housing discrimination cases based on disparate impact on minorities.

"Finding prophylactic and stable housing is a foundation for successful re-entry into gild, but these opportunities remain elusive for people with a criminal history and more so for those who are people of color," Shanna Smith, president and CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance, an advancement group, said in a statement.

Some lawmakers were disquisitional of HUD's new guidelines and, by extension, the Obama administration'southward efforts.

"There are no lengths to which this administration won't become to support convicted criminals. While those who accept served their debt to club and completed the rehabilitation process deserve a second chance, it should not be at the expense of police force-abiding citizens," Rep. Tom Cotton wool, R-Arkansas said in a argument on Tuesday. "Whether releasing tearing felons early from prison house, preventing employers from request nigh an applicant's criminal record, or now blocking landlords from deciding whether to rent to someone who may pose a threat to their property and the surrounding customs, these policies are part of a disturbing design. And they send the wrong message to criminals in Arkansas and across the country."

Halimah Abdullah

Halimah Abdullah is a digital editor and author for NBC News and is responsible for reporting, writing, editing and web producing federal policy news for NBCNews.com. Prior to joining the site in April 2015, Abdullah worked at CNN.com, where she reported, edited and web produced stories on federal politics and policy. In that function, Abdullah was responsible for helping embrace Congress, the White House, federal agencies, and national political races.

A veteran politics and policy reporter and editor, Abdullah has worked for Bloomberg Government, McClatchy Newspapers' Washington Bureau, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, Newsday, and the Dallas Forenoon News. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times and TODAY.com, amid other publications. Her journalism and artistic writing have won awards, been published in several anthologies, and earned her invitations to attend several writing colonies. Abdullah is too a writing professor who has taught at the Academy of Maryland and the University of the District of Columbia and John Jay College and Brooklyn College in New York.

Abdullah lives in the Washington D.C. metro area.

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Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hud-seeks-end-housing-discrimination-against-ex-offenders-n550471

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