WASHINGTON — More than 100 fair housing organizations launched a five-day national Fair Housing Week of Action on Monday, urging Congress to restore federal funding for community-based groups that handle nearly three-quarters of the nation’s housing discrimination complaints, according to a press release from the National Fair Housing Alliance.
NFHA, a coalition of fair housing organizations that works to end housing discrimination, said the mobilization runs through July 17. The effort pairs in-district and virtual meetings with members of Congress, with a public letter-writing campaign aimed at delivering 5,000 letters to lawmakers by Friday.
The campaign has two primary demands: Congress should fully fund fair housing in the fiscal year 2027 budget and require the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to conduct the open, standardized grant competition that has distributed the funding for more than three decades. NFHA said doing so would allow appropriated funds to reach frontline organizations.
At stake is the Fair Housing Initiatives Program, or FHIP, the only federal funding source for private, nonprofit fair housing enforcement and education. According to NFHA, community-based fair housing organizations processed 74% of all housing discrimination complaints filed nationwide in 2024, while HUD itself processed fewer than 5%.
If FHIP funding is eliminated, NFHA warns that most local organizations will close, lay off staff or sharply reduce services. The release describes those who would be left without assistance, such as disabled veterans seeking reasonable accommodations, seniors and people with disabilities needing accessible housing, families with children who are illegally blocked from renting, women facing sexual harassment by landlords, domestic violence survivors who are improperly evicted, and Black, Brown and LGBTQ+ people denied housing because of who they are.
The release contends that HUD’s recent grant notices depart sharply from congressional intent. For fiscal year 2025, HUD is awarding no FHIP funding for local enforcement and education, the program’s primary purpose since its creation in 1987. Instead, HUD is directing the funding primarily to two large awards for well-funded law schools that, NFHA argues, lack the capacity to serve people in local communities nationwide.
For fiscal year 2026, HUD has barred any organization that received FHIP funding in 2023 or 2024 from applying and is awarding preference points to new applicants. NFHA said those rules penalize the grantees with the deepest experience serving people who have been denied housing.
The administration’s fiscal year 2026 and 2027 budget requests each proposed eliminating FHIP entirely. Congress rejected the 2026 proposal and restored the program’s funding, and NFHA is urging lawmakers to do the same for fiscal year 2027.
“If HUD’s new grant rules stand, fair housing organizations that have efficiently served their communities for decades will close their doors,” said Nikitra Bailey, executive vice president of NFHA, in the press release. Bailey added that people facing housing discrimination would be left with little or no recourse.
Bailey said Congress must fully fund fair housing in 2027 and ensure the money reaches the communities it was intended to serve. She also said the program has received strong bipartisan support for more than three decades because the organizations it funds are effective, adding that every person in the country should have somewhere to turn when they are unlawfully denied housing.
According to the release, FHIP’s bipartisan roots run deep. The program was created during President Ronald Reagan’s second administration and made permanent under President George H.W. Bush through the Housing and Community Development Act of 1992.
Congress wrote its rationale into the statute itself, finding that private nonprofit fair housing enforcement groups are “a necessary component of the fair housing enforcement system,” and has funded the program every year since.
Alongside the congressional meetings and letter-writing campaign, the Week of Action includes a coordinated daily social media campaign across NFHA and member organization channels. Media outreach also spans digital, television, radio and social media platforms.
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