# National Fair Housing Alliance The **National Fair Housing Alliance** (NFHA) is a Washington, D.C.-based alliance of private fair housing organizations, founded in **1988**. It describes itself as a trade association of more than 170 fair housing and justice-focused organizations and individuals. Its president and CEO is **Lisa Rice**. NFHA investigates housing and lending discrimination, often by testing (sending matched applicants who differ only by race, disability or family status), brings lawsuits, and publishes the annual *Fair Housing Trends Report*, the main national count of discrimination complaints. ## Why it matters Most housing discrimination in the United States is caught by local nonprofits, not federal investigators. NFHA's 2025 report counted **32,321** housing discrimination complaints nationwide in 2024, and found that community-based fair housing groups handled nearly three-quarters of them. Those groups depend heavily on federal grants from the [[Fair Housing Initiatives Program]]. When the federal government pulled back from enforcement in 2025, NFHA and its members became the main legal opposition, and they have won most of the rounds so far. ## Notable cases - **Facebook (2019).** NFHA and three member groups sued [[Facebook]] in 2018, arguing that its ad tools let landlords and lenders hide housing ads from people by race, sex, age, family status and other protected traits. In the March 2019 settlement, Facebook agreed to build a separate system for housing, employment and credit ads that bars targeting by those traits and by zip code, and to change the tool that finds "lookalike" audiences. - **Fair housing grants (2025).** In March 2025, four NFHA members sued after HUD cancelled dozens of fair housing grants, citing [[DOGE]]. A federal judge in Massachusetts ordered 78 grants restored, and HUD complied. In June 2025, NFHA and the Tennessee Fair Housing Council sued over HUD's refusal to award the previous year's funds and again won a court order. - **Grant restructuring (2026).** In July 2026 NFHA and the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center challenged HUD's new funding notices, which would have sent $46 million of a $56 million program to five grants. On August 26 Judge Myong J. Joun blocked the 2025 notices and called HUD's reasons "pretextual." The challenge to the 2026 notices is pending. - **Rulemaking.** NFHA has opposed HUD's termination of the [[Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing]] rule, its proposal to delete its [[Disparate Impact]] regulation, and the CFPB's 2026 rewrite of lending rules under the [[Equal Credit Opportunity Act]]. ## Connections - [[Fair Housing Act of 1968]] - [[Fair Housing Initiatives Program]] - [[Disparate Impact]] - [[Department of Housing and Urban Development]]