You’re thinking of moving to a new home in Texas, and you’re concerned about fair housing. You want the opportunity to buy, rent or insure a home in Texas—regardless of who you are or where you’re from.
The Texas Fair Housing Act protects you from people who might try to take those opportunities away from you. We’ll teach you what this law covers, how to spot housing discrimination, and what to do if someone breaks the rules.
Let’s get started.
Fair housing means anyone can buy, rent or insure a home without discrimination. Why does that matter? Because housing discrimination ruled the real estate market for a long time.
Landlords could refuse to rent to you because of things like your race, country of origin or faith. Homeowners could refuse to sell you a house if they didn’t like who you were or where you came from. Lenders could deny you a mortgage. Even if you did manage to buy a home, insurance agents could refuse to insure it.
Then came Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968—aka the Fair Housing Act (FHA). This law banned housing discrimination and made fair housing the rule.
Texas has its own fair housing law, the Texas Fair Housing Act (TFHA). It’s a lot like the regular FHA. The main differences are that it’s a little more specific than the federal law and that Texas has its own way of handling complaints.
The Texas Workforce Commission’s Civil Rights Division enforces the TFHA. And the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs creates fair housing opportunities.
Some Texas communities have extra fair housing laws. Since we’re looking at the state level, you’ll want to check with your city to learn the rules there.
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The TFHA protects your rights to live in the housing you want. That includes:
And no one can discriminate against you for your:
Some protected things—like race or religion—are pretty clear-cut. But as we all see at Thanksgiving, family can get complicated.
Familial status refers to what type of family situation you’re in. Under Texas housing laws, no one can discriminate against you for:
According to the TFHA, a disability is a physical or mental condition that severely limits at least one major life activity. 3 Some examples include using a wheelchair, having a chronic illness, or struggling with PTSD.
And this rule doesn’t just apply to you. It applies to anyone who lives in your home—like a child, spouse or adult relative—or visits you there.
The Texas Fair Housing Act does a lot to help people, but there are still some loopholes in the law. Technically, people can still discriminate based on:
You’ve heard the phrase, “There’s an exception to every rule.” Well, that applies to fair housing too. We’ve talked about the areas the law doesn’t cover, but these are the exceptions to the areas the law does cover.
Home sellers and landlords don’t have to follow the Texas Fair Housing act if they:
Basically, you can only sell or rent to whoever you want if you make a word-of-mouth deal once in a while. If you want to be a full-time landlord, flip houses, or work with a real estate agent, you have to abide by the TFHA.
This one’s a mouthful. Let’s say you own a building with four apartments in it. You live in one apartment, and you rent out the other three for extra income. In that case, you can choose whoever you want to live there.
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But if there are five apartments or more? You have to obey the TFHA. (This rule’s to keep big leasing companies and housing communities from discriminating.)
Some for-profit and nonprofit religious groups own homes or apartments. They can limit the sale or rental of those dwellings to only people of the same religion. Or they can give people of their religion preference over other people.
Private clubs that own dwellings for noncommercial purposes can make them members only. 7 But since clubs can’t keep you out based on national origin, sex and so on, you can join the club to live in one of their homes. (Then again, do you really want to live in a snooty members-only neighborhood?)
When someone appraises a property for you, they can’t lie about its value to discourage you from buying it. Especially if they’re discriminating against anything the Texas Fair Housing Act protects.
The TFHA has clear rules about family status. But some housing communities are designed specifically for seniors, so they don’t have to let young families move in. 8
For safety reasons, many states and cities have maximum occupancy laws that limit how many people can live in a home or apartment. If your family exceeds that amount, then the seller or landlord can turn you away. 9
Now you know what fair housing is and how the Texas Fair Housing Act protects it. But how do you recognize housing discrimination? Here’s how.
If you’re trying to rent or buy a home in Texas, then the landlord or current home seller can’t do any of the following:
Disabled people get all the protections we just talked about. But they also get a few extra protections:
No one in the real estate business can deny you services or block transactions based on your race, color, religion, sex, national origin or disability.
And when we say no one, we mean no one. Not real estate agents, landlords, home sellers, mortgage lenders, appraisers, insurance agents—nobody. They all have to follow these rules.
So, what does it look like when they break the rules? Here are a few examples:
If you think someone has discriminated against you, you have a couple options for handling it. You can file a complaint with the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC), or you can sue the other person in civil court.
The TWC investigates housing discrimination complaints. They’ll work with you and the person you complained about (aka the respondent) to find a solution. Here’s how it works.
You submit a written complaint within one year of the alleged discrimination.
To file a complaint, go to the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs website. It tells you how to file complaints with the state, some Texas cities, and even the federal government.
The TWC gives the other person a chance to respond.
The TWC has 20 days to send the respondent a copy of your complaint. Then the respondent has 10 days to reply in writing. 12
The TWC investigates.
The TWC has 100 days to investigate your complaint, starting the day it’s filed. 13 And they may add people to the complaint as they get more info. If you complain about a home seller but they think the real estate agent is guilty, they’ll go after both parties.
The TWC recommends how to resolve the complaint.
The TWC usually resolves complaints in one of four ways:
The TWC holds a hearing.
The TWC hearing decides if the respondent violated the Texas Fair Housing Act—and if so, how to punish them. Afterward, the TWC may order the respondent to pay penalties (more on those in a minute).
You can ask the TWC to help you sue the respondent in a real court of law. If you do, the TWC will cancel its hearing and hand your case over to the Attorney General. The AG then has 30 days to file a lawsuit in the county where the discrimination happened. 15
You can also sue the other person on your own within two years of alleged discrimination. And you can do that even if you’ve already filed a complaint with the TWC. (The TWC works around what you do, not the other way around.)
The civil court can award you damages and legal fees and make the other person pay penalties. But there are a few caveats:
Resolving a complaint with the TWC can take a long time—like more than six months! And that doesn’t even include the TWC hearing or a court case.
But the TWC exists for a reason. They help Texans fight housing discrimination—so they need to know when it happens. When you file a complaint with the TWC, they can help stop the same thing from happening to more people.
If someone violates the Texas Fair Housing Act, they’ll face serious penalties.
The TWC can order the respondent to pay you for damages, attorney fees, court costs and other fees. They’ll also face civil penalties, which are:
If the person is a repeat offender, the time limits come off, and they may have to pay for violations that happened decades ago. They’ll pay the penalty money to the Texas comptroller—who’s like the chief financial officer for the state.
Courts can issue an injunction or restraining order and award you financial relief, attorney fees and court costs. They can also fine the offender $50,000 for a first violation or $100,000 for the second. 18
Some housing discrimination can actually lead to criminal charges, not just civil ones. For example, using force or threats to keep you from renting or buying a home is a Class A misdemeanor in Texas. That’s punishable with a fine of up to $4,000 and up to a year in jail. 19
When you’re looking for a place to live, the last thing you should have to deal with is housing discrimination. So, how do you make sure this doesn’t happen to you? You build a team of people you trust to help you find the right home—starting with a great real estate agent.
We recommend RamseyTrusted real estate agents. We’ve vetted them, and we know they have good business sense and good character to go with it. They’ll treat you right—period. And since they’re Endorsed Local Providers (ELPs), they know your new neighborhood like the back of their hand.
