On the ADA’s 35th Anniversary, Inaccessible Housing Remains a Profound Barrier for People with Disabilities
By: Nick Adjami
July 17, 2025
Despite laws intended to prevent disability discrimination, people with disabilities continue to encounter barriers to housing. Two of the most important laws guaranteeing equal housing access for people with disabilities are the Fair Housing Act (FHA) and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). On the 35th anniversary of the ADA’s passage, it is crucial to reflect on progress over the past three and a half decades to advance access to housing for people with disabilities, and re-commit to the work that remains to achieve true equality.
People with disabilities face two main types of barriers when attempting to access housing: physical barriers and policy barriers.
In terms of physical barriers, research shows that less than 5% of housing in the U.S. is accessible to people with disabilities. This is a crisis for the 26% of Americans who have a disability, exacerbated by the affordable housing crisis facing the nation as a whole. Thankfully, laws like the FHA and ADA require new-construction multifamily housing to meet a baseline level of accessibility. Together, these standards seek to increase the availability of accessible homes for people with disabilities.
As for single-family housing, however, there are fewer restrictions. Typically, the accessibility standards of the ADA, FHA, and most building codes, do not apply to single-family residences. This can make it especially difficult for people with disabilities in more rural areas to find accessible housing.
And even in multi-family buildings covered by the ADA and FHA, violations still occur. In 2019, ERC released From Click to Visit, a report sharing the results of an investigation into 23 multi-family apartment buildings in the Greater Washington, D.C. region. The investigation sought to assess compliance with accessible design and construction requirements. Tests revealed FHA violations at 16 of the 23 properties and ADA violations at 13 properties. In total, ERC uncovered 82 violations including inaccessible entrances and common areas, unusable kitchens and bathrooms, non-compliant parking areas, and more. These violations are not mere inconveniences, but severe barriers that dramatically, unfairly, and illegally restrict the housing choices available to people with disabilities. The violations ERC uncovered speak to the need for robust enforcement to ensure ADA and FHA mandates are working as intended.
Unfortunately, even in buildings that have been designed and built accessibly, management policies and practices can also serve to exclude people with disabilities.
Sometimes, these barriers appear before the prospective tenant even sets foot in the building. ERC’s From Click to Visit report also documented how inaccessible websites can prevent blind and low-vision renters from finding housing. The study used matched-pair testing to compare the experiences of a blind tester and a sighted tester navigating housing providers’ websites. Matched-pair testing compares treatment between two people based on one variable, in this case disability, by controlling for all other differences. By controlling for all other factors, investigators can deduce that the test variable is responsible for differences between the two testers’ experiences. In these tests, the blind tester used a screen reader, a form of assistive technology, to navigate the housing providers’ websites. ERC tested both the desktop and mobile versions of 25 websites. The blind tester faced accessibility barriers in 84% of desktop tests and 76% of mobile tests. These barriers prevented them from determining unit availability, learning about rent specials, submitting an application, and performing other critical functions.
Website inaccessibility can also present issues for current tenants. For example, many housing providers rely on online portals to manage maintenance requests, which may not be accessible to blind and low-vision tenants. In these cases, the housing provider has a responsibility to provide the tenant with a “reasonable accommodation.” A reasonable accommodation is a change, exception, or adjustment to a rule, policy, practice, or service that may be necessary to afford a person with a disability equal enjoyment of their home. In this case, the housing provider should work with the tenant to identify a different method for them to submit maintenance requests, such as by calling the maintenance office or repairperson.
This is just one example of a reasonable accommodation. Reasonable accommodations are important for ensuring people with disabilities are not unfairly excluded from housing opportunities. One common reasonable accommodation request is for an accessible parking space. Another common accommodation is for a “no pets” building to allow a person with a disability to live with their service or assistance animal. For example, a blind tenant should be allowed to live with their seeing-eye dog, and a tenant with depression should be allowed to live with their emotional support cat. Assistance animals are not pets, so housing providers should not charge pet rent or apply breed bans in these cases.
When a housing provider fails to grant a needed reasonable accommodation, it can have the same effect as a structural barrier, in that it prevents a person with a disability from accessing housing. In 2024 alone, ERC fielded 37 reports from local residents alleging their housing provider failed to make a needed reasonable accommodation.
“Reasonable modifications” are similar to reasonable accommodations, except that they are structural changes as opposed to policy changes that afford people with disabilities equal enjoyment of their homes. Common examples include installing grab bars in the bathroom or lowering kitchen cabinets. One key difference is that, except in federally-assisted housing, the tenant has to pay for modifications, whereas the housing provider has to pay costs related to implementing accommodations.
Finally, discrimination remains a common barrier preventing people with disabilities from accessing housing.
The National Fair Housing Alliance reported over 34,000 housing discrimination complaints in 2023. Over half of those complaints alleged illegal disability-based discrimination. As the data show, we are a long way from people with disabilities being treated equitably when it comes to housing.
Those numbers do not even include cases where people with disabilities may have been discriminated against based on their “source of income,” referring to how they pay rent. People with disabilities are more likely than people without disabilities to use some kind of subsidy such as a housing voucher or social security Supplemental Security Income (SSI) to pay their rent. Some cities, counties, and states have passed legislation prohibiting housing providers from discriminating on this basis, but in many places it remains legal for a housing provider to refuse to accept these forms of income. Housing providers who do so disproportionately bar people with disabilities from living in their properties.
“Source of income” protections are critically important for advancing equal access to housing for people with disabilities, but they must be backed up by enforcement in order to be effective. Source of income discrimination is illegal throughout D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, but in 2024 ERC fielded over 100 complaints alleging violations.
One key reason why housing discrimination continues is that the burden to identify and report it often falls on the individual who experienced it.
When a prospective tenant is rejected from a property, they often are not given a reason why, leaving them unsure as to whether discrimination may have played a role. Even if the landlord were to explicitly say “I am rejecting you because of your disability,” the onus would still be on the individual to file a complaint in order to rectify the situation or receive any restitution. The complaint process can be time-consuming and onerous. That burden, on top of the struggle to find a place to live, often deters people from following through with a complaint. This system for enforcing fair housing law requires consumers to be knowledgeable about their rights and empowered to take action when they encounter violations. As such, fair housing organizations like ERC are a vital part of the ecosystem: they provide the education necessary to help consumers identify discrimination when it happens to them, and the support necessary to help them address it.
Unfortunately, the majority of fair housing centers and Fair Housing Assistance Programs (FHAPs) are located in cities, and may struggle to reach rural populations. ERC’s experience working in rural Maryland for example, indicates a critical lack of resources such as legal aid and homeless shelters for people experiencing discrimination, Increasing access to these services is key to combatting disability discrimination more effectively.
Civil rights testing is another key strategy for effectively addressing housing discrimination. Systemic testing is a more proactive, comprehensive approach compared to relying on individual complainants: it helps to unburden consumers and can provide more substantial remedies.
For example, in February 2025, ERC filed two complaints against housing providers in the Greater Washington, D.C. region who we allege violated accessible design and construction requirements. The complaints stemmed from testing investigations ERC conducted at the two properties. ERC’s actions can also serve as a warning to housing developers across the region that they will face consequences for violating the law.
As we commemorate 35 years of the ADA’s existence, this kind of systemic work is necessary to finally achieve the Act’s promise of equal opportunity for all. The law’s passage was an extraordinary accomplishment, but it has not been backed up by the kind of tenacious enforcement necessary to truly stamp out discrimination. In the years leading up to the ADA’s passage, disability rights advocates fought relentlessly to convince leaders to take their needs seriously and codify the rights they knew they deserved. 35 years later, the fight is for compliance. People with disabilities are still unjustifiably excluded from spaces they are entitled to, like housing, all too often. Civil rights compliance is the law, it’s good for business, and it’s the right thing to do.
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The information contained in this publication is not legal advice and should not be construed as such. For legal advice, please contact an attorney.
The ERC’s approach to this article was informed by the organization’s late Disability Rights Director David Shaffer.
The ERC is a civil rights organization that identifies and seeks to eliminate unlawful and unfair discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations in its home community of Greater Washington DC and nationwide. The ERC’s core strategy for identifying unlawful and unfair discrimination is civil rights testing. When the ERC identifies discrimination, it seeks to eliminate it through the use of testing data to educate the public and business community, support policy advocacy, conduct compliance testing and training, and, if necessary, take enforcement action. For more information, please visit www.equalrightscenter.org.
