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Data · Fair housing complaints

Fair housing complaints by county and basis

Where people filed housing discrimination complaints with HUD between 2006 and mid-2020, and what the complaints said: disability, race, familial status, national origin and more. The counts come from HUD's own list of filed cases, one row per case, and are tied to HUD's year-by-state table.

Checked October 29, 2026 · CC BY 4.0 · Not legal advice

What is in this dataset?

Fair Housing Act (Title VIII) cases filed with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, January 2006 through June 2020: 130,661 cases counted for the nation, for each state and territory by calendar year, and for each county with at least one case, with the cases that cite each basis (race, color, national origin, disability, familial status, religion, sex, retaliation). HUD's list is one row per filed case; only counts are kept. A case can cite several bases, so the bases add up to more than the cases.

Use it to see where fair housing complaints are filed, which bases they cite (disability and race lead) and how filings changed from 2006 to 2020, as context for housing-discrimination and civil-rights work. Agents can look up a state or county, compare several, or search by basis ("disability", "familial status"). The file ends on June 30, 2020.

Records
2,790
Look up by
55
state
Primary-source records
2,790

The letters are explained in what P, S, D and U mean.

Where does the data come from?

HUD's list of filed Title VIII cases (one row per case, with violation state, county and the bases cited) is read from the federal open-data inventory, and only counts are kept: per state and county for the whole period and per state and calendar year. County names are matched to current county codes; Connecticut's eight old counties and other retired county names keep their own records, and cases HUD gives no county for count in the state only. A gate ties the state-by-year counts to HUD's own year-by-state table and re-aggregates the live file for 50 random cells.

Period covered
January 1, 2006 to June 30, 2020
Places
The whole US, states and counties
How often we refresh it
Whenever the source publishes a change
Records read
October 29, 2026

Official sources

The sources the records cite most

What does a record look like?

  • Ohio: 7,194 Fair Housing Act cases filed with HUD (January 2006 through June 2020); the most cited bases were 3,440 disability, 2,210 race, 1,449 familial status (a case can cite more than one). The 2020 count runs to June 30.

    Status P · checked October 29, 2026 · source: HUD FHEO Filed Title VIII Cases (federal open-data inventory)

  • United States: 130,661 Fair Housing Act cases filed with HUD (January 2006 through June 2020); the most cited bases were 66,924 disability, 39,877 race, 17,775 familial status (a case can cite more than one).

    Status P · checked October 29, 2026 · source: HUD FHEO Filed Title VIII Cases (federal open-data inventory)

  • Texas: 13,049 Fair Housing Act cases filed with HUD (January 2006 through June 2020); the most cited bases were 6,295 disability, 4,539 race, 1,750 national origin (a case can cite more than one). The 2020 count runs to June 30.

    Status P · checked October 29, 2026 · source: HUD FHEO Filed Title VIII Cases (federal open-data inventory)

The full records add the dates, the quoted source text and every field in the CSV and JSON files below.

What each of the 17 main columns means
jurisdiction
Two-letter state or territory code, or US
level
us, state, county, former-county or county-not-recorded
county
Five-digit county FIPS code (or a retired code HUD still uses)
countyName
County name
states
On the US record: the number of states and territories in the file
cases
Fair Housing Act cases filed with HUD in the period
race
Cases that cite a race basis
color
Cases that cite a color basis
nationalOrigin
Cases that cite a national origin basis
disability
Cases that cite a disability basis
familialStatus
Cases that cite a familial status basis
religion
Cases that cite a religion basis
sex
Cases that cite a sex basis
retaliation
Cases that cite retaliation
value
Cases filed (the same as cases)
dataThrough
Last filing date in HUD's file (June 30, 2020)
cases_2006
State records: cases filed in each calendar year, 2006 to 2020 (2020 runs to June 30)

How do I use it in my own tools?

fairhousing_lookup
For one two-letter state or territory code, or US: the Fair Housing Act cases filed with HUD in 2006 to June 2020 for the state, every county in it and each calendar year, with the bases cited.
fairhousing_compare
The records of up to 10 states or territories (two-letter codes) or US side by side: cases filed, each basis and each calendar year, with every county.
fairhousing_search
Records whose text matches the words given, such as "disability", "familial status" or a county or state name.

How to cite this dataset

You can reuse, adapt and republish this data, including commercially, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC BY 4.0). The only condition is that you credit Probative and link to the source.

Version
1.0.0, released October 30, 2026
Every version
10.5281/zenodo.23792757 (always points to the newest)
License
CC BY 4.0

Download the data

Free, no email or login. The files are hosted on this site and Zenodo, a public research archive.

Suggested citation

Probative. (2026). Fair housing complaints by county and basis: Fair Housing Act cases filed with HUD, 2006 to June 2020 (Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23792758

Credit line for a chart, table or article

Source: Probative, Fair housing complaints by county and basis: Fair Housing Act cases filed with HUD, 2006 to June 2020, version 1.0.0, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23792758, licensed CC BY 4.0.

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Not legal advice. These are counts of complaints filed with HUD; a filed case is an allegation, not a finding that discrimination occurred, and it is not a count of all housing discrimination (most is never reported). State and local fair housing agencies handle many complaints that never reach HUD. Rights and deadlines are for your own counsel.

What changed recently?

  • 2026-10-29 · HUD fair housing cases filed January 2006 through June 2020, counted by state, county and basis (race, disability, familial status and more): 130,661 cases in all. (source)

The full log is in changes.json.

What are the limits?

  • The file covers cases filed from January 1, 2006 to June 30, 2020. It does not run to the present, and 2020 is a half year.
  • A filed case is an allegation. It is not a finding that discrimination happened, and it is not a count of all housing discrimination: most incidents are never reported, and state and local fair housing agencies handle many complaints that never reach HUD.
  • A case can cite more than one basis (race and disability, for example), so the basis counts add up to more than the cases. Race sub-groups are included in the race count.
  • County is where HUD records the alleged violation. HUD names counties rather than coding them; we match each name to a county code. Connecticut's old counties and a few retired county names keep their own records, and cases with no county named count in the state only.
  • Counties with no filed case are not records. The county counts are small in most places, so read a single county's figure as a rough indication, not a rate; they are not adjusted for population.
  • Records older than 400 days since their last check are marked stale in the files until we re-check them. Every confirmed error we fix is listed in the data corrections log.

Found a wrong value? Report an error with the record id and the source that shows the right value.

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