HUD Launches ‘Fair Housing’ Ads, Cites ‘Religious Discrimination,’ ‘Neighborhoods with Mosques’

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is launching an advertising campaign to “educate the public” about housing discrimination, saying there is a “persistence of discrimination based on religion.”

The public service announcement campaign will feature television, radio and print ads in English, Spanish, and Chinese around the theme “Fair Housing is Your Right, Use It.”  {snip}

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The campaign will encourage individuals to file complaints under the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which made it illegal to discriminate in the sale or rental of housing based on race, color, sex, religion, national origin, familial status or disability.

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HUD will also implement its iPhone app that it unveiled in February into the campaign, which allows individuals a “quick and easy way” to file housing discrimination complaints on their mobile phones.

In addition, the campaign will advertise print ads that feature several scenarios of individuals and families facing discrimination based on their race, religion or disability.

A Muslim woman wearing a hijab is the subject of one ad that says, “Is religious discrimination keeping you out of the home of your dreams?”

The ad then tells people to look out for these “possible signs” of housing discrimination: “I’ll show you neighborhoods with mosques”; “We only take people who speak English clearly”; and “You might be more comfortable living elsewhere.”

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Another depicts a Hispanic family with the caption, “They told us to ‘live someplace else.’”  “We have rights.  We called HUD,” the ad states.

A separate ad features an African-American boy with the caption, “How can we tell him that the color of his skin is keeping his family from the home of its dreams?”

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The PSAs will run in advertising space and in time-slots donated by the media.  The radio ads will be featured on more than 3,500 radio stations and networks throughout the country.