No Data, No Funding, No Enforcement

Disability is once again the most common basis of reported housing discrimination in the United States. According to the National Fair Housing Alliance’s newly released 2026 Fair Housing Trends Report, disability was the basis for more than 55% of complaints reported in 2025. This is not a new trend or pattern. Disability has topped the list for many years. Failing to address the causes of discrimination threatens disabled people’s ability to live in their communities.

This year’s report also documents three other troubling realities. First, the federal government withheld its data, hiding much of the national picture. Second, the local organizations that fight housing discrimination are being starved of funding. Third, the federal government continues to retreat from enforcement. For disabled people, particularly racially marginalized disabled people, disabled elders, and low-income disabled people, that combination is dangerous.

For the first time since the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) began collecting this data in 1996, the federal government did not provide it. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the state and local agencies in the Fair Housing Assistance Program (FHAP) did not submit their 2025 data. The Department of Justice (DOJ) also withheld its data, so NFHA had to piece together DOJ’s numbers from the agency’s public case website.

As a result, the report counts 20,805 complaints filed with private nonprofit fair housing organizations and DOJ, down from 24,001 the previous year. NFHA is clear that this drop does not mean discrimination went down. It means fewer people were able to report it, and a large share of complaints are now hidden from the public.

This gap hits disabled people especially hard. Disability discrimination complaints are often filed with HUD and state and local fair housing agencies. When those numbers aren’t disclosed, our ability to know how many disabled tenants and applicants were denied reasonable accommodations, how many accessibility violations were never fixed, and how long those cases dragged on is compromised.

We need data to make the case for funding, enforcement, and policy change. Withholding it hides harm and lets agencies avoid accountability.

Local fair housing organizations are where most disabled people turn when a landlord refuses a ramp, an assistance animal, or a transfer to a ground-floor unit. They handle most complaints in this country.

In 2025, 76% of the NFHA member organizations that submitted data reported funding disruptions. Nearly half of Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP) grantees waited up to six months for funds, even after NFHA won a federal court order.

The damage is real. Of the 62 organizations that reported disruptions:

• 58 reduced services
• 15 shrank or stopped fair housing testing
• 14 cut staff
• 11 scaled back or stopped taking new cases
• 9 could not make payroll, took out loans, or drained their reserves

Meanwhile, federal enforcement is collapsing. HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity now has roughly one-third of the staff it had in January 2025. HUD has been referring cases to the same local organizations it is defunding.

DOJ filed just 31 fair housing cases in fiscal year 2025, compared with 44 the year before, and only 5 after January 2025. Pattern-or-practice cases, which can change how whole companies and cities operate, fell from 21 to three. Most of the Civil Rights Division’s career managers and attorneys are gone.

The result is an enforcement gap: fewer federal enforcers, fewer local advocates, and the same or greater need. When the federal government retreats and the local safety net weakens at the same time, the people who fall through are those with the fewest options.

Disability was the basis of 11,543 of the 20,805 complaints NFHA was able to count. That is 55% of the total, up from 51% in 2024, and nearly five times the number of race-based complaints. Disability was also the leading basis for harassment complaints. These numbers come only from the sources NFHA could reach, so the true scale is likely much larger.

The pattern behind these numbers is familiar to disability rights advocates and attorneys. Housing providers deny reasonable accommodations and modifications. Developers build new housing that disabled people cannot get into or use, decades after the Fair Housing Act’s design and construction requirements took effect. Landlords refuse assistance animals and retaliate against people who ask.

There is a direct connection between housing discrimination and institutionalization. Under Olmstead v. Lois Curtis, disabled people have the right to live in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs. That right means little if there is no accessible, affordable home to move into, or if a tenant loses the home they have because a landlord refused a simple accommodation. Every unenforced complaint is a step toward a nursing facility, a shelter, or the street. At the same time, the administration has moved to dismantle federal accessibility initiatives alongside diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, treating access itself as something to eliminate.

Disability justice teaches that no one lives a single-issue life. The disabled people most exposed to housing discrimination are often also poor, Black and brown, immigrant, queer and trans, older, and surviving violence. The report’s other findings hit these communities too, often harder.

Race and disparate impact

The administration has retreated from prosecuting race discrimination cases involving Black and Latine people and has moved against disparate impact liability, one of the most important tools for challenging policies that look neutral but shut out some groups far more than others. Racially marginalized disabled people face both the discrimination and the loss of an essential tool for challenging it.

Source of income

NFHA counted 1,892 source-of-income complaints. Many disabled people rely on SSI, SSDI, and Housing Choice Vouchers. When a landlord refuses vouchers, that is often disability discrimination in practice, even when the law does not call it that.

Immigrant and mixed-status families

New rules require proof of citizenship or eligible status in federally assisted housing and end prorated assistance for mixed-status families. Disabled family members, including disabled children who are U.S. citizens, risk losing their homes along with everyone else in the household.

LGBTQ+ people

Federal agencies are replacing “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” with “sex” across nearly 50 housing regulations. Disabled trans and queer people already face high rates of housing instability and harassment. Weaker protections will make that worse.

Survivors and elders

NFHA counted 242 complaints from survivors of domestic violence and 331 based on age. Disabled survivors and disabled elders need accessible housing and reasonable accommodations to stay safe and stay in their homes.

NFHA identifies people with disabilities, racially marginalized people, women, single parents, immigrants, and people using housing assistance as especially vulnerable to housing harassment. These are not separate groups. They are often the same people.

A policy agenda that treats disability, race, immigration status, gender, and poverty as separate issues will keep failing those who live at their intersections. Disability justice requires us to recognize these connections and build solutions that address them together.

The picture is bleak, but it is not hopeless. Fair housing laws still matter, and disabled people and our allies know how to use them. This moment demands concrete action.

Congress must fund enforcement and demand transparency

NFHA calls for $125 million for FHIP, $36.6 million for FHAP, and $153 million for HUD’s fair housing office in FY2027, along with real oversight of HUD and DOJ. Congress should also require HUD and DOJ to release complaint data. The public paid for that data.

States must step in where the federal government steps out

States with strong fair housing laws, including California, should publish their own complaint data, fund local fair housing organizations directly, and use state enforcement to fill the gap.

Funders must back the front line

Local fair housing organizations need flexible, multi-year support to keep testing, take new cases, and keep their doors open through federal delays.

Advocates must lead with intersectionality

Disability rights, racial justice, immigrant rights, LGBTQ+, and anti-violence advocates are fighting the same retreat. We should be fighting it together, with racially marginalized and low-income disabled people at the center.

Disabled people must keep reporting

Every complaint is evidence. Document denials, keep copies of accommodation requests, and contact a local fair housing organization or your state civil rights agency.

Nearly 50 years ago, disabled people occupied a federal building in San Francisco until the government agreed to enforce our civil rights. The lesson still holds. Rights on paper are not enough. They have to be funded, enforced, and defended. When the federal government abandons its duty, we won’t back down — we hold the line ourselves.