APARTMENT ADVOCATE
NATIONAL APARTMENT ASSOCIATION
Fed Officials Warn Against Blanket
Criminal History Exclusions
HUD issued fair housing guidance on April
4 that extends protections for individuals with
criminal histories. This guidance builds on similar policies issued by HUD last year that only
applied to public and federal-assisted housing.
Most notably, the new guidance prohibits the use
of arrest records to deny residency and denials
based on convictions must consider the nature
and severity of the incident.
Overall, the guidance seeks to end blanket
exclusions of prospective residents based on
criminal history in favor of a more individualized
approach that is more narrowly tailored to achieve
property safety and security goals.
Importantly, while those with criminal histories are not a protected class under the Fair Hous-
34 | TRENDS • MAY 2016
ing Act (FHA), HUD has crafted the policy
using disparate impact theory. Disparate impact
allows fair housing complaints to proceed where
actions have a discriminatory result even if there
was no intent to discriminate.
NAA/NMHC raised questions about the
operational impacts of disparate impact theory
in last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which
identified this and other screening practices as a
potential source for FHA liability.
HUD Issues Final Multifamily
Mortgage Insurance Rates
HUD issued the final rules cutting the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) multifam-
ily mortgage insurance rates on March 31 to spur
the financing of affordable housing and energyefficient apartments.
The decision is anticipated to result in the
rehabilitation of an additional 12,000 units of
affordable housing each year. FHA’s multifamily
programs account for 9.2 percent of the total
multifamily mortgage market.
NAA/NMHC submitted comments to the
proposed rules applauding the decision and also
offered comments clarifying and adjusting certain
aspects related to inclusionary zoning, fee caps
and energy-efficiency. HUD adopted a number
of our comments directly or they were incorporated along with similar comments from other
submitted letters.
www.aamdhq.org