Multifamily Building Conformance With The Fair
Housing Accessibility Guidelines (February 2003, 207 p)
The Fair Housing Act (the Act) requires that “covered
multifamily dwellings” built for first occupancy after
March 13, 1991, be designed and constructed to include certain
features of accessible design. Covered multifamily dwellings
are found in buildings consisting of four or more units, if
such buildings have one or more elevators, and ground floor
units in other buildings consisting of four or more units.
The Act’s design and construction requirements apply
to privately owned housing, federally or publicly assisted
housing, and to all types of housing when the housing is located
in buildings containing four or more dwelling units, including,
for example, single-family homes, apartments, condominiums,
dormitories, assisted living developments, time-sharing properties,
and homeless shelters when used as a residence. The requirements
do not apply to multi-story town homes that do not have elevators
or to single-family detached houses. As part of its obligation
to provide technical assistance to states, units of local
government, and others, the U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development (HUD) published the Fair Housing Accessibility
Guidelines (the Guidelines) in l991. The Guidelines are intended
to provide a safe harbor for compliance with the accessibility
requirements of the Fair Housing Act. Although these Guidelines
are not the only method of complying with the Act, they are
the most commonly known and utilized by the industry.
In 1997, HUD commissioned this study to obtain a quantitative
assessment of the extent of conformance with the Guidelines
and to suggest explanations for patterns of conformance and
nonconformance. The study was developed in part because evidence
from the field, complaints filed with HUD, and private litigation
suggested that some architects, contractors, and building
owners were either ignorant of, or were avoiding, the law
and were building multifamily projects that did not comply
with the Act’s design and construction requirements.
There was also a need for HUD to have baseline information
on the extent to which covered multifamily dwellings were
in compliance in order to measure the effects of its technical
assistance and enforcement efforts. It was hoped that the
results of the study could provide HUD with a better understanding
of the level of compliance across the United States, as well
as provide some guidance on how to improve compliance with
the Act’s requirements.
The study is descriptive in nature: it provides a statistical
picture of multifamily housing conformance with the Guidelines.
The study gives a broad national view of conformance but cannot
be used to extrapolate about local conditions. Building design
and construction are regulated at the local and/or state level;
as a result, localities are subject to different building
code and/or local accessibility requirements. This can have
an impact on conformance at the local level, and as a result,
the report’s findings may differ with local reports
of conformance in cities and states around the country.
The data gathered and analyzed for this report do not answer
the question of why housing either meets or does not meet
the Guidelines. The study does present possible explanations
for the statistical findings; however, it is important to
note that the survey did not allow for “shades of gray”
in determining conformance with the Guidelines. The survey
gathered data on whether certain elements of multifamily housing
either met or did not meet the Guidelines, not the degree
of overall conformance. The survey consisted of 291 separate
questions about technical items relating to accessibility.
Neither the questions nor the results were weighted, and all
items were treated equally. Some readers may appraise one
item as “more important” than another, but the
survey does not offer value judgments on the nature of conformance.
Moreover, the degree of nonconformance was not considered,
so that a 1-inch deviation from a requirement was treated
equally to a 10-inch deviation. Thus, the survey measured
and recorded levels of nonconformance that might not warrant
enforcement action in the field, and the result is a report
that simply describes the rates of conformance for multifamily
housing in meeting the Guidelines.
HUD expects to make the data collected for this report available
by September 2004. If you have any questions about these data,
please contact Jennifer Stoloff (Jennifer_A._Stoloff@hud.gov).
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