Federal fair housing laws require landlords to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities, like providing handicap parking or setting rent schedules around Social Security benefits.
But a report from Housing Opportunities Made Equal suggests that almost half the rental housing the organization tested over the last year didn't do that.
HOME investigates complaints against landlords related to discrimination. It also tests housing providers' compliance with anti-discrimination laws more generally in order to better understand the housing market.
The organization undertook 62 investigations between January 2025 and March 2026, the report says. In 29 of those investigations, it found proof landlords had engaged in some form of discrimination against prospective or existing tenants who were disabled. In another 20 cases, HOME couldn't rule out claims of discrimination.
There are other kinds of housing discrimination, namely due to race or gender. But Executive Director Elisabeth Risch says 82% of referrals the organization gets are tenants who think they've experienced disability discrimination.
Risch says one of the main issues the organization's clients have run into is an unwillingness to set rent due dates around payment schedules for disability benefits.
"We've seen people evicted for this issue because they can't adjust the payment," she says. "We've seen extraordinary late fees. Our testing is showing you're charged $100 in late fees because they won't adjust the rent date."
A second issue the organization sees often is lack of handicap accessible parking. That can make it difficult for a person to safely come and go from their home.
"We've had a number of clients who have experienced these issues," she says. "The impact is that they can't live fully in their homes. They can't live in a place that meets their needs."
Risch says court precedents make it clear that refusing to provide accessible parking or adjust payment schedules to align with benefit payments is a violation of fair housing laws. She says better enforcement of existing laws is necessary — but also suggests that sometimes, landlords and property managers simply don't know what the law says.
"There's a lot of misunderstanding or miseducation about this," she says. "One of our strong calls is for more education, more training of housing providers so they know how to respond to tenants asking for this, and so that they're not maybe unintentionally discriminating when it's really a lack of education."
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