On Jan. 20, 2021, President Joe Biden’s first day in office, he issued an executive order calling for all federal agencies to interpret protections against sex-based discrimination as including discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. As a result, the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued an announcement in February 2021 that it would update protections granted under the Fair Housing Act.

This means, in effect, that most kinds of housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identify, whether subtle or blatant, intentional or unintentional, are now unambiguously illegal.

What Does This Update to the Fair Housing Act Mean?

If your property is in one of the 31 states (plus the District of Columbia) which already had legal protections or interpretations in place prior to this shift, this means little will change. Similarly, if your multifamily asset is an affordable housing community receiving federal funding from HUD, similar measures have been in place since early 2012. Even so, it is always beneficial to ensure your housing practices aren’t improperly excluding or impeding members of the LGBTQ+ community or any other protected class.

If you own or operate a market-rate property in any state without these protections, it would be useful to conduct an audit of your housing practices to ensure you are not unintentionally impacting members of the LGBTQ+ community. 

Special care should be taken during applicant screening processes, in particular. Are you classifying a family composed of members of the LGBTQ+ community appropriately, for example? They are entitled to the same treatment as any other family, though many landlords may be unaware.

Prohibited Actions under the updated regulations:

The result of any operations audit at your property should look to ensure that your community is not doing any of the following actions based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression:

• Refusing to rent

• Refusing to negotiate rental rates

• Setting different terms or rental rates

• Providing different information about housing availability

• Providing different levels of service

Finally, all landlords should understand that it is expressly against the law to take any action to interfere with, threaten, or intimidate any renter or prospective tenant filing a Fair Housing Act-related complaint.