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Independent Living News & Policy from the National Council on Independent Living

Urgent: Action Needed to Stop Damage to Fair Housing – Deadline: Midnight, Monday, October 15

Access to housing is one of the top disability issues across the country. Did you know that more than half of housing discrimination complaints filed with the federal government are because of disability discrimination?

NCIL logo - National Council on Independent LivingToday, we need your help to defend disability rights and access to housing. “Fair housing” is the term used for enforcement of equal access to housing, without discrimination. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is currently waging an attack on fair housing by opening up its own rule on Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) to revisions that could damage the disability housing rights we have won so far, and your voice is needed.

We need to flood HUD with comments supporting the 2015 rule on Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) that exposes and addresses our nation’s history of government-led segregation and inequitable community investment, and requires jurisdictions to create policies and programs to address it. The 2015 rule also requires real community engagement by HUD, and that must also happen.

For those of you who represent an organization, we ask you to take 3 easy but important steps today:

  1. Use our template letter (Word document), modify with your own thoughts and comments, and submit to HUD via regulations.gov by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Monday October 15th. Be sure to edit the [bolded] portions with your organization’s information before submitting.
  2. Encourage others within your network to do the same.

For those of you representing yourself as an individual, you can also use the same link to submit comments. We urge you to focus on explaining why it is important to end discrimination in housing.

Comments are due by midnight on Monday, October 15.

Thank you to our friends at Access Living for providing this information.

Comments

  1. jeanne lexchel says

    accessible and affordable housing for everyone is necessary!

  2. Elaine Brandt says

    I’m a retired faculty member from the state university system in 2017, and I am being priced out of my once-affordable apartment. I am on fixed income now til I die but my rent increases EVERY MONTH because the landlord was allowed to change from 3-yr. lease to 1 year lease for no reason. That is one reason why WE NEED AFFORDABLE HOUSING NOW. It has become critical in the USA that there is not enough affordable housing for all of those who need it. Rather than lessen availability of housing, HUD should be increasing it and should have begun years ago.