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In this special issue of Fair Housing Coach, we'll update you on recent developments in fair housing law in Washington, state legislatures, and the courts.

This month's issue of Fair Housing Coach focuses on what fair housing experts see as a growing trend in potential liability under fair housing law—retaliation claims.

This month, we are going to review fair housing rules applicable to advertising and marketing—and explain how to apply those rules in the shift from traditional forms of print media to new media, including the Internet, Facebook, and other Web-based technologies.

This month marks the 42nd anniversary of the passage of the Fair Housing Act (FHA), the federal law that bars housing discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, and familial status.

This month, the focus is on preventing resident grievances from escalating into costly litigation. Of course, you can't prevent anyone from filing a fair housing complaint—doing so may itself be a fair housing violation. But if you focus your fair housing efforts on prevention, you can avoid the costly drain on your resources—in the time, effort, and expense needed to defend your community from a full-blown HUD investigation or a private fair housing lawsuit.

In this special issue of Fair Housing Coach, we'll update you on some recent court developments involving the Fair Housing Act (FHA).

In some recent decisions, courts have weighed in on both sides of the simmering dispute over whether and to what extent the FHA applies to conduct that occurs after the sale or rental of a dwelling. HUD's position is that the FHA bans discrimination and retaliation that occurs both before and after a person buys or rents a dwelling.

This month, Fair Housing Coach highlights how to comply with fair housing requirements while protecting the safety and security of your community.

To cut the risk of crime, safety experts offer a variety of tips, many of which are aimed at keeping criminals from moving into the community. For example, the experts advise communities to fully screen their applicants, but you could be vulnerable to a fair housing complaint unless you apply the policy consistently to all applicants.

In honor of Fair Housing Month, this month's issue will give you a chance to test your knowledge of fair housing law. The rules forbidding outright housing discrimination seem fairly straightforward, but simply telling your staff not to discriminate against prospects and residents is not enough to avoid fair housing trouble. The law also bans more subtle forms of discrimination, which may not seem to be overtly discriminatory, but have an unfair impact on some prospects or applicants with a protected characteristic.

This month, the focus is on fair housing trouble from an unexpected source: the people who work at your community, but aren't your employees. Communities often rely on a variety of outside contractors or vendors to perform services on their behalf, ranging from independent leasing agents and property management companies to landscapers, painters, and plumbers, among others.

This month, we are going to discuss strategies to avoid fair housing trouble during the application process—beginning with initial contact and ending with approval or rejection of an application. Fair housing law prohibits communities from discriminating against prospects and applicants based on race and other protected characteristics. And each stage of the application process—showing units, filling out paperwork, performing credit checks, negotiating terms, and so on—has the potential to generate a fair housing complaint.