As we all embark on our New Year’s resolutions, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) is making its own changes. This week, NAR leadership met in Washington where they unanimously passed a Fair Housing Action Plan, invigorating a commitment to provide Americans with fair housing opportunities. These members then met with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and other senior department officials to discuss the new plan and the issues surrounding fair housing.
The unfairness of fair housing is nothing new. In 2016, twelve percent of the discrimination complaints submitted to the HUD were based on familial status, raising complex issues proxying for racial discrimination and/or LGBTQIA individuals and families. The NAR has taken steps to crack down on discrimination by realtors, however, landlords don’t have the same repercussions at the federal level.
Per the recent meeting, the NAR and the HUD will work together to reinforce the new plan, ACT, to highlight (A)ccountability, (C)ulture Change, and (T)raining for 1.5 million REALTORS® (realtors licensed by the NAR) to uphold fair housing for all Americans. In a NAR press release further commitments in the plan are as follows:
• Ensure that state licensing laws include effective fair-housing training requirements and hold real estate agents accountable to their fair housing obligations;
• Launch a Public-Service Announcement Campaign that reaffirm NAR’s commitment to fair housing, and how consumers can report problems;
• Integrate fair housing into all REALTOR® conferences and engagements
• Explore the creation of a voluntary self-testing program, in partnership with a fair housing organization, as a resource for brokers and others who want confidential reports on agent practices so they can address problems;
• Create more robust fair housing education, including unconscious-bias training, and education on how the actions of REALTORS® shape communities.
• Conduct a national study to determine what factors motivate discrimination in sales market.
• Profile leaders who exemplify the best fair housing practices and workplace diversity.
• Develop materials to help REALTORS® provide consumers with information on schools that avoids fair housing pitfalls.
We can hope that with new energy between both the NAR and the government, Americans will find some relief in the housing market entering into 2020.
Staff Writer, Allison Yano is an artist and writer based in LA. She holds a BFA in Applied Visual Arts and Minor in Writing from Oregon State University, and an MFA in Fine Art from Pratt Institute. Her waking hours are filled with an insatiable love of storytelling, science, and soy lattes.
