The Cost of Un-Fair Housing

Today I attended a conference hosted by the Arizona Fair Housing Partnership. This event was housed at the Disability Empowerment Center in Phoenix. Attorney general Tom Horne briefly spoke about housing discrimination cases that have been perused by the Attorney Generals office. In addition a senior management official for HUD named Rebbecca Flanagan gave an excellent presentation about the federal fair housing act. This conference was attend by many nonprofit organizations that provide housing assistance as well as many owners/and property managers of multi unit housing facilities. The last hour of the conference allowed participants to ask specific questions about fair housing legislation and for clarification on weather or not they would be in violation in certain cases. I found today to be a great learning experience. The thing I found most interesting was that majority of fair housing complaints and law suits involved persons with disabilities. One man from the disability empowerment center explained how there is a huge population of disabled young people living in nursing homes because there is simply no housing available with accommodations that they need to live independently. This man expressed that these people are living in nursing homes at the cost of the tax payers while property owners have vacant properties that if slightly modified would allow these individuals to move in. He expressed how this was bad business for everyone and that as a disabled man his "green (money) was as good as the next guys". He also expressed that at any time anyone can become disabled; therefore we should make these accommodations for others because we may need them someday too. This is an example of the "true cost" of unfair housing.