U.S. Housing Discrimination Complaints Rise as Support Network Thins

Accusations are up nearly 20 percent since 2014, according to a nonprofit, which warns that “the infrastructure for enforcing our nation’s fair housing laws is being dismantled.”

Housing discrimination is on the rise in the United States, according to a new report, but fair housing advocates say the figures understate the scope of the problem.

The report, by the National Fair Housing Alliance, a nonprofit, said there were 32,321 complaints in 2024, drawing on data from fair housing organizations and government agencies. Complaints increased by more than 17 percent from 2014 to 2024 before a small drop. The highest number of complaints in recent years was in 2023, with 34,150.

The number of complaints has grown since 2014 for several reasons, including continuous efforts from nonprofits to educate the public about fair housing issues, said Lisa Rice, the alliance’s president and chief executive.

Of the 8,320 complaints from 2024 that were filed with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, along with state and local governments, 471 resulted in findings that discrimination had likely occurred, according to the report. An additional 1,755 complaints resulted in conciliations or settlements before an official finding.

Though 23,957 complaints were filed with fair housing organizations, an alliance representative said the amount that resulted in conciliations or settlements from them is not available. Another 44 complaints were filed with the Department of Justice.

But the number of complaints filed by the public may decline in the coming years, though that wouldn’t necessarily signal improvement, according to the report. Instead, because of funding cuts and policy changes, the number of organizations and federal employees equipped to handle complaints is shrinking.

“America is in the throes of a fair housing and affordable housing crisis and the infrastructure for enforcing our nation’s fair housing laws is being dismantled in a time when we need it most,” Ms. Rice said.

The report accounts for complaints made during the Biden presidency, but changes made under President Trump have prompted fears among housing advocates that people will be discouraged from reporting discrimination, she added.

Since Mr. Trump’s second term began, his administration has, among other changes, removed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s Special Purpose Credit Program, through which lenders offered down payment and closing cost assistance to low-income and minority home buyers.

Perhaps the most detrimental changes to fair housing policy in the last year, Ms. Rice said, are the funding and staffing cuts at the federal level.

Last winter, the Trump administration canceled roughly $30 million in federal grants for nonprofit fair housing organizations, which handled three-quarters of the complaints the National Fair Housing Alliance recorded for 2024.

A Massachusetts judge ordered the Department of Housing and Urban Development to release the grants in March, but some funds have yet to be issued and several nonprofits, including the Fair Housing Center of Nebraska-Iowa and the North Texas Fair Housing Center, remain closed as a result, according to an alliance spokesperson.

Staff at the Miami Valley Fair Housing Center, a nonprofit in Dayton, Ohio, were helping a mother who faced eviction after she was the victim of domestic violence when their grant was canceled, Ms. Rice said.

The nonprofit “was assisting her to make sure she could be safely housed when she returned from the hospital and their funding was cut,” Ms. Rice said. “I don’t think people realize how central housing is to every area and facet of your life.”

During the government shutdown this fall, the Trump administration reduced HUD’s staffing through layoffs, particularly to the Fair Housing Initiatives Program, which the department uses to issue grants to fair housing nonprofits. And in September, the administration fired two HUD civil rights lawyers over their participation in a whistle-blower report.

A HUD spokesperson said the agency had “inherited a deeply inefficient case system” and is working to restore fair housing enforcement to its core mission, adding that it completed more than 6,200 fair housing investigations in 2025, up from 5,777 in 2024.

“By managing fair housing discrimination complaints from HUD headquarters, we are addressing the backlog of cases and delivering better results,” the spokesperson said in an email.

Craig Gurian, the executive director of the New York-based Anti-Discrimination Center, said the HUD staffing cuts had weakened a system that was already not operating to its full potential.

“Even in what you think are better times, the fair housing part of the agency, which is a really small percentage of HUD overall, hasn’t been robustly funded and hasn’t had a robust view of what its mission is,” he said.

As in previous years, disability-related complaints in 2024, many involving inadequate accessibility accommodations, made up the largest share, accounting for more than 54 percent of all cases. Complaints based on national origin rose 8 percent year over year, reaching 1,836 last year, according to the report.

Most cases stemmed from the rental market, where there were 27,007 complaints, compared with 659 related to home sales and 220 tied to mortgage lending.

Regionally, the National Fair Housing Alliance found that the largest concentration of complaints was in California, Nevada and Arizona, with 9,386. But the high number in California had more to do with the state’s civil rights department and comprehensive network of fair housing agencies than a higher prevalence of discrimination, said Caroline Peattie, the executive director of Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California, a nonprofit.

“There’s no question that there are more fair housing agencies like us in California, more than in other states, that are doing education and outreach so that people will learn about their fair housing rights and then call us,” Ms. Peattie said.

In New York City, the topic of fair housing often comes up in regards to co-ops, which can deny applications from potential home buyers without saying why. This leads to confusion for prospective buyers like Nitsan Shai who, in early 2020, received a rejection from a co-op in Park Slope, Brooklyn, for no given reason. Mr. Shai, who was 25 and worked at Google at the time, had a good income and no pets, he said. The experience left him questioning if it had to do with his age or race, both of which are federally protected classes.

When asked if he considered filing a complaint to a state agency, lawyer or nonprofit, Mr. Shai said it didn’t seem feasible at the time.

“I don’t know who I would have reported it to,” Mr. Shai said. “I looked it up online and there were dozens of cases that have gone to court and have all ruled in favor of the co-op.”

Amid the dwindling resources at the federal level, people who believe they are facing housing discrimination should first reach out to their local fair housing agency, which can be found on the alliance’s website, or submit a complaint directly to the alliance, Ms. Rice said.

“These organizations have boots on the ground and directly assist consumers facing fair housing and fair lending challenges,” she said.

Filing complaints with state and local governments is also an option, she added.

In New York City, the public advocate, Jumaane Williams, introduced a bill two years ago that would require co-ops to provide written explanations for buyer rejections. The City Council held a hearing on the proposal on Dec. 2, but closed its session on Dec. 18 without voting on it.

Neither Mayor Eric Adams nor his successor, Zohran Mamdani, have publicly backed the bill. Making co-op discrimination easier to identify was also one of the strategies named in an October report on improving fair housing protections in 2025 from the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

In the meantime, many cases of housing discrimination are likely to go unreported, Mr. Gurian said.

“If people don’t feel like coming forward is going to do something for them, they tend not to come forward,” he said. “And if people see that it takes forever for cases to be processed, that’s another deterrent.”

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