Fair Housing

Format: 90-minute webinar or conference session
Focus: What are the most common Fair Housing questions—and how do you answer them with confidence? In this fast-paced, interactive session, we tackle the top 15 questions that matter most to your team. Before the session, the sponsor will receive a list of 40 frequently asked Fair Housing questions and select the 15 most relevant to your audience. Each question will be introduced with a participant poll, followed by a clear explanation, practical guidance, and real-world examples from the instructor. You bring the curiosity—we bring the clarity.

Format: 90-minute webinar or conference session
Focus: Recent administrative changes have created significant uncertainty across the fair housing landscape, including staffing reductions at HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, shifts in enforcement responsibility, and the withdrawal or suspension of long-standing guidance. While policies and messaging may be changing, fair housing laws remain fully in effect.

This session focuses on timely issues affecting property owners and managers, including:

• Application taking and marketing practices

• Use of criminal records in screening

• Sexual orientation and gender identity protections

• Harassment (sexual, racial, religious, ethnic, and disability-related)

• Service animals and other assistance animals

• Limited English Proficiency (LEP) requirements

• Affirmative Fair Housing Marketing Plans (AFHMPs)

• The current status of VAWA regulations and forms

Learn what has changed, what has not, and how to continue operating in compliance amid uncertainty. Bring your toughest fair housing questions and leave with practical, defensible guidance you can rely on. [Topics subject to change.]

Format: 90-minute webinar or conference session
Focus: On 11/17/2025, HUD rescinded its 4/10/2024 Proposed Rule “Reducing Barriers to HUD-Assisted Housing” to change how criminal records may be considered in deciding to prohibit individuals from residing in HUD-assisted housing. Where does this leave housing providers? This course is applicable to all properties subject to the Fair Housing Act and includes information on how criminal screening can still violate the Fair Housing Act as well as updates on state and local “fair chance housing” ordinances that limit your ability to do criminal screening.

Format: 90-minute webinar or conference session
Focus: Even well-intentioned policies can violate fair housing laws if they result in discrimination against protected classes. This session explains how criminal background checks, nuisance ordinances, “crime-free” programs, domestic-violence policies, and income restrictions can create disparate impact risks—especially for Blacks, Hispanics, women, and persons with disabilities. Learn practical ways to revise your policies, strengthen consistency in screening, and protect your organization from costly fair housing violations.

Format: 90-minute webinar or conference session
Focus: An interactive look back at the origins and evolution of Fair Housing laws in the United States: Where we are, how we got here, and where we might be headed. This is not a "nuts and bolts" course - it is a course designed to re-energize jaded housing providers to approach the rules in the spirit of the law. This course is interactive and engaging including a "Price is Right" style intro with prizes, a matching game of dates and events, and an inspirational Power Point.

Format: 2-hour webinar or conference session
Focus: This session will help team members understand how what they do or say in performing their individual jobs can either prevent or result in fair housing complaints and/or violations. They will gain insight into how the perceptions and intentions of the applicant or resident and the team member set the stage for every encounter. They will learn to recognize how fair housing complaints and violations can result from their action, inaction, or delayed action as well as from their communication with applicants and residents verbally, nonverbally or in writing. With a focus on senior housing, each of these will be illustrated with real world examples relevant to team members at every level. Participants will be asked to determine what could have been done differently to avoid fair housing exposure. The session will conclude with a set of best practices and a take-home self-assessment.

Format: 2 1/2 hour webinar or conference session
Focus: There’s more to complying with the Violence Against Women Act than the forms. Owners, agents, managers, resident service coordinators, supervisors, and maintenance should attend this course. Here’s what we cover:
• Domestic Violence: a Snapshot [the numbers, the pandemic, housing instability and poverty, and obstacles to leaving (why victims stay)]
• Complying with the Regulations [the protections, the forms, documentation issues, emergency transfers, guidance for HUD, RD, and LIHTC projects, and a review of state and local laws]
• How to Handle the On-Site Issues [confidentiality, what to say and when to say it, when and how to be proactive, and 5 real-world “what would you do” scenarios representing challenges in both HUD/RD and Tax Credit properties focused on managers and maintenance staff]

Format: 90-minute webinar or conference session
Focus: You’ve been trained ad nauseam on Fair Housing, right? So, let’s put that book-learning to use with some real-life challenges every manager faces on site. The answer is right on the tip of your tongue. Or is it?

Format: 90-minute webinar or conference session
Focus: When a complaint is levied against a housing provider and makes it to a state or federal court, the way the court decides the case provides “takeaways” for the rest of us. The results of court cases are one of the best ways to find out the “Dos and Don’ts” of Fair Housing. We will review recent court cases about the four most frequent areas of complaint: disability, race, sex, and familial status. You will hear the case, make the call, and find out why the court decided the way they did. We will discuss the takeaways from each case on what we should and should not do in our day-to-day interactions with applicants and residents. The course includes a review of words and phrases to be avoided, used with caution, and those that are considered generally acceptable when advertising or speaking about your property.

Format: 90-minute webinar or conference session
Focus: Maintenance personnel come into contact with residents more than anyone else on site. And if they are not careful, their interaction with a resident or a potential resident could be misunderstood and result in a fair housing violation. This session includes a review of Fair Housing basics and explores typical situations where the well-intentioned maintenance person could be at risk of violating fair housing laws, ways to handle these without discriminating, and the importance of documentation. Includes a checklist for assessing whether company policies are providing the guidance a maintenance person needs plus a special focus on sexual harassment and communicating with persons with disabilities.

Format: 90-minute webinar or conference session
Focus: AFHMPs submitted but not approved? MOR findings for not having an approved plan on file? Confusion about which race and ethnicity data to use. And now, with the Administration’s proposal to eliminate the AFHMP requirement, owners and agents are asking: Do we still need an AFHMP—and what does compliance look like right now?

This session cuts through the noise.

Despite proposed changes, many properties are still being cited for AFHMP deficiencies, and the Fair Housing Act obligations underlying affirmative marketing remain in place. In 2026 HUD has implemented an expedited method for getting plans reviewed and approved. This practical, plain-English session focuses on what housing providers must do today to stay compliant and defensible during this period of uncertainty.

Drawing on experience preparing and reviewing 500+ AFHMPs nationwide for HUD, RD, and state agencies, Gwen Volk walks participants through how to complete an approvable AFHMP. Attendees will learn how to use Census Bureau tools; select and interpret the correct demographic data; develop effective outreach strategies and community contacts; and work with HUD, RD, PBCAs, or state agencies.

The session also covers 5-year AFHMP reviews, how to document compliance when agencies are not actively reviewing plans, and how to respond to AFHMP-related MOR findings.

Participants will leave with clear, practical guidance on separating proposed changes from enforceable requirements—and a roadmap for AFHMP compliance that works in the real world.

Format: 90-minute webinar or conference session
Focus: So, you’ve written your Affirmative Fair Housing Marketing Plan and HUD, RD or the State Agency have approved it. Now what? Bring the plan you are trying to implement, and we will dissect it together. This course reviews where the information came from and what it means, teaches you how to implement and train staff on the plan, keep, and organize records, track results, and prove ongoing compliance. We will discuss FHEO’s focus on what they call “segregated” properties and how to demonstrate compliance. We will also discuss how to perform the 5-year review of the plan, how to determine if the plan needs to be revised, and how to report the changes or lack of changes to HUD.

Format: 90-minute webinar or conference session
Focus: Section 504 provides special protections to persons with disabilities who reside in HUD, HOME and RD funded properties. The penalty for non-compliance with Section 504 is loss of all federal funding. The responsibility for coordinating 504 compliance applies to all covered properties – regardless of the number of employees and regardless of whether or not one person has been named as the “504 Coordinator”. This course teaches the duties and responsibilities that properties must fulfill, who must perform them, how to define the specific role of a 504 coordinator when one is required, and how to manage 504 monitoring and compliance efficiently and effectively to prevent complaints and findings.

Format: 4-hour webinar or conference session
Focus: Fair Housing basics plus problem solving exercises and activities. Includes (1) Why Fair Housing? (2) Protected Classes and Prohibited Activities, (3) Section 504, (4) Familial Status (5) Persons with Disabilities, and (6) Key differences among HUD, HOME, RD, LIHTC, and Conventional property rules.

Format: 90-minute webinar or conference session
Focus: Live-in aids, assistance animals, assigned parking . . . Fair Housing laws require owners/managers of rental housing to make reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities when a rule, policy or practice interferes with the person’s right to use and enjoy their dwelling or when an accommodation will enable the tenant to comply with the lease, house rules and other requirements of tenancy. What is reasonable? What is necessary? When and how do you verify that the accommodation is related to the disability? What are the limitations on the Owner/Manager responsibility to provide the accommodation? What do you do when lease violations persist or result from the accommodation? Get the answers to these and other questions by reviewing the applicable laws and applying them to real-world examples and solutions.

Format: 90-minute webinar or conference session
Focus: Fair Housing Act Accessibility Guidelines (FHAAG), Americans with Disability Act Accessibility Guide (ADAAG), Uniform Federal Accessibility Standards (UFAS). Which ones apply to HUD? RD? Tax Credits?” Conventional Market Rate properties? What are the requirements for new construction? For existing properties? What makes a property “new”? And most importantly - which ones apply to my property and what does that mean for me?

Format: 90-minute webinar or conference session
Focus: HUD reminds us that failure to provide meaningful access to persons with Limited English Proficiency could be a violation of the Fair Housing Act. Why? Because national origin is a protected class. HUD and RD properties are required to periodically look at the LEP profile of their residents and market area and update their plan to provide meaningful access. But even a tax credit or market rate property could be in trouble if LEP persons face barriers to applying. Come to this session and learn what to do about LEP.

Format: 90-minute webinar or conference session
Focus: The majority of Fair Housing complaints come from Persons with Disabilities, and 60% of those complaints are related to service and emotional support animals. Are you and your staff prepared to handle this challenging issue on site? Find out what HUD says about how to evaluate and approve or deny an applicant’s or resident’s reasonable accommodation request for an assistance animal, about on-line verifications and websites that sell ESA certifications. Learn the steps HUD recommends for processing requests for service versus emotional support animals, requests for animals “commonly kept in households” versus “unique animals” and requests for multiple animals. Learn how to apply the HUD recommendations and handle challenging issues with animals on site.