Town of Arlington, Fair Housing Action Plan (July 2021)

Citation: Town of Arlington, Fair Housing Action Plan (July 2021)
Jurisdiction: Arlington (municipal)
Source: Official source
Original Source: https://www.arlingtonma.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/57214/637641171662530000 ↗

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Federal Laws
Arlington is subject to numerous federal statutes and regulations that mandate fair housing practices. The Fair
Housing Act (Title VIII of the 1968 Civil Rights Act) establishes fair housing standards nationwide, prohibiting
discrimination by race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, and family status (presence of children). The
act covers a wide number of practices, including discrimination in the sale or rental of housing, marketing of
housing, mortgage lending, harassment, reasonable modification of a home for disability accessibility reasons,
and interference with the exercise of fair housing rights. Virtually all housing in the United States is covered
under the act.1
The Fair Housing Act prohibits housing discrimination, whether intentional or not. The Supreme Court held in
2015’s Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project that the Fair Housing
Act prohibits practices that have “disparate impact” on protected classes, regardless of intention. Victims of this
kind of indirect discrimination must show a direct connection between a given policy and disparate impact on a
protected class, and, if the defendants claim and courts find the policy serves a legitimate non-discriminatory
purpose, that there is an alternative non-discriminatory way to achieve that purpose. Though these disparate
impact claims could be harder to prove than direct discrimination, they are important in preventing the
subterfuge of discriminatory practice into an apparently polite, neutral form.
Additional statutes, regulations, and executive orders extend fair housing requirements to activities funded by
the federal government, create additional requirements related to certain protected classes (particularly people
with