Coalition of Advocates Urges Biden Administration to Ensure Greater Housing Access to People with Arrest & Conviction Records

No person can thrive without safe, secure, and affordable housing. Yet individuals with justice system involvement often face insurmountable hurdles to meet this basic need.

Justice-involved individuals deserve the chance to find safe, stable, and affordable housing. And we must continue to prioritize the voices of justice-involved individuals in arriving at meaningful solutions.

The Shriver Center on Poverty Law along with a broad coalition of tenant, fair housing, and criminal legal reform advocacy organizations and advocates – including the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted Persons and Families Movement, JustLeadership USA, the National Housing Law Project, and the National Low Income Housing Coalition – sent a letter to the Biden Administration with recommendations to enhance housing access for justice-involved individuals. Recommendations include:

• reinstituting and bolstering Obama-era Fair Housing Act regulations and guidance, such as those implementing disparate impact protections, to ensure greater housing access to people with arrest and conviction records; 
• ensuring justice-involved individuals have equitable access to federally subsidized housing; and 
• increasing federal regulation of the tenant-screening industry. 

Read our full letter and list of recommendations to the Biden Administration.