HUD: The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sent a “Dear Partner” letter to real estate professionals clarifying that they are not violating the Fair Housing Act when they share information with potential homebuyers about neighborhood crime rates and school quality data.
“Buying a home is one of the most important decisions a family will ever make,” said secretary Scott Turner. “Americans should not be left in the dark about important facts like neighborhood safety or school quality. HUD makes it clear that real estate professionals can freely and legally provide this information in an equitable and consistent manner to American families.”
The background is that the Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin (and recent amendments), family status, and disability. Discrimination included “directing” consumers toward or away from neighborhoods based on protected characteristics. The Biden administration added this with a directive and an Executive Order that said the Fair Housing Act should be interpreted not only to prevent discrimination but to correct and reverse past discrimination:
This is not only a mandate to avoid discrimination but an obligation to take action that reverses historical patterns of discrimination and other forms of discrimination and provides access to opportunities that have been denied for a long time.
…i [HUD] The Secretary shall take any action necessary,…to implement the requirements of the Fair Housing Act that HUD administer its programs in a manner that ensures the development of fair housing and HUD’s overall duty to administer the Act (42 USC 3608(a)) including preventing practices that have an unfair discriminatory effect.
The language of “discrimination” emphasized so-called disparate impact, not just intentional discrimination. counted as discriminatory—and contributed to a legal and reputational environment where platforms and agents had strong incentives to avoid anything that could be seen as discriminatory. As a result, by the end of the year, Realtor.com had removed its crime map from all search results, as did Trulia, and Redfin announced that it would no longer add crime data to its site. since Zillow already does not include such data, by the beginning of 2022 all the major sites had dropped the crime data. Similarly, the National Association of Realtors has published materials instructs agents not to directly answer customer questions about neighborhood safety. One article in the “Security Series” was titled “‘Is This a Safe Place?’ Don’t Answer That” and “Security Chain” meant security for the seller and not the client.
So without clearly outlawing such information, the government created a legal and reputational environment that undermined its provision. Portals removed crime maps and sellers became reluctant to answer common consumer questions about neighborhood safety and school quality. That is an undermining of the ministry, not a victory for human rights. The excuse was that the crime data might be inaccurate but the real fear was that it would accurately suggest that neighborhoods with a high percentage of black people have more crime. However, withholding information about crime and schools does not change the facts; it simply shifts the advantage of information to consumers who are wealthy, well-connected, or sophisticated enough to acquire the data themselves. Furthermore, it should go without saying that black consumers also want information about neighborhood crime rates—do these consumers not count? Suppressing factual information is rarely a good way to improve results. Like Blocking the Box, blocking direct access to relevant information encourages poor proxy-based decision-making.
Trump’s HUD is right: fair housing legislation should prevent discrimination, not prevent sellers from telling the truth.
