Honor veterans year-round with fair housing protections

As our nation honored its veterans this week, it’s important to not only honor our veterans today but to continue to support them throughout the year in ways that improve their lives and recognize their extraordinary sacrifice for our country.

Take housing, for example. Veterans face huge obstacles in locating and retaining housing in addition to other hardships, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), service-related injuries, and the difficulty of adjusting to civilian life generally. As a result, veterans are more likely to struggle with homelessness than the overall population. In 2018, almost 10% of homeless adults were veterans.

For our modern-day heroes, it is critical they are able to confront the many forms of housing discrimination they unfortunately still encounter. I speak from personal experience as a veteran and as a longtime advocate of fair-housing principles. The Trump administration has recently attempted to gut a critical tool under the Fair Housing Act called “disparate impact,” which will hinder veterans’ abilities to challenge discrimination and find housing. The disparate impact doctrine says that banks, landlords, and other housing providers should choose policies that do not exclude certain groups of people even if they appear to be neutral on their face. This decades-old protection prevents harmful and unjustified policies, thereby ensuring that everyone can be treated fairly.

Veterans with disabilities, who constitute a large portion of the veteran population, have much to lose if disparate impact is significantly weakened. More than 4 million veterans have a “serviceconnected disability,” defined as a disease or injury (mental or physical) incurred or aggravated during active military service, and these veterans rely on the disparate impact doctrine as a reliable tool to combat housing discrimination. Disparate impact helps to overcome obstacles to accessible housing for veterans and ensures that veterans with physical or intellectual disabilities can live in group homes and in neighborhoods of their choosing. It also allows veterans who rely on service animals to access the housing they require.

Weakening the disparate impact protection will cause untold harm to veterans and their families around the country. Many veterans have young children, and often we see young families headed by two veterans. These families need the disparate impact tool in order to challenge discrimination against families with children, such as when landlords impose lease conditions that restrict occupancy to one person per bedroom, which is illegal under the Fair

Housing Act. Veterans with children rely on the disparate impact protection to ensure they are not barred from housing or forced to rent more expensive multi-bedroom housing that is beyond their limited financial means to accommodate their families.

The disparate impact tool is a powerful weapon against discrimination, specifically against women veterans, whose overall representation among the veteran community rises each year due to higher enlistment rates. Under the Fair Housing Act, women cannot be treated differently in housing or lending decisions based on gender. Importantly, disparate impact may be invoked to protect against eviction of veterans who are threatened with domestic violence. Based on individual lease policies or local nuisance laws, landlords can try to evict victims of domestic violence for calling the police more than once to seek protection from their abuser. This places

— the primary victims of domestic abuse — and their children at risk of homelessness and further violence.

Veterans of color face additional hurdles of discrimination based on race or national origin. This community is sizable: African Americans represent almost 12% of veterans and Latinx persons represent almost 7%. This discrimination makes housing reduced or even completely unavailable for these communities, with egregious consequences.

For example, African Americans comprise one-third of all veterans experiencing homelessness. Continued viability of disparate impact ensures that unlawful zoning practices that foreclose affordable housing to veterans of color can be challenged.

It can be used to halt lending practices that charge excessive fees or rates for home mortgage loans that force veterans of color to take on risky or costly loans — or not have access to financing at all. It allows veterans to challenge insurance policies that discriminate against homes located in neighborhoods of color and prevent homeowners from fully protecting their homes from damage due to fire, hurricanes, or other disasters. Any veteran who has sacrificed for this country should not have to endure housing discrimination.

Veterans spend their lives protecting this great nation. It’s only fair that this great nation does the same for them. In order to protect veterans from widespread housing discrimination and displacement, we must ensure the disparate impact standard is upheld.

This week in which veterans are honored, I call on everyone to support veterans — including those with disabilities, those with families, women and veterans of color — by fighting back against the Trump administration’s efforts to weaken disparate impact.