Every few years, private organizations receive federal subsidies to monitor fair housing compliance and engage testing. One group in particular, from time to time, files standard form, non-specific complaints against housing providers claiming discrimination. State and local agencies should reject them as being too vague to respond to. However, since the agencies received federal money for each filed complaint, they have incentive to accept them. The private agency filling them insists on payment for its efforts. Since most housing providers will give in and pay a few hundred dollars to make the complaint go away, the agency has an incentive to keep filing them. This is an abuse landlords have been living with for years and probably will have to continue living with.
~Thanks to Andy M. Hull, Attorney-at-Law
Metropolitan