The Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Justice have jointly rescinded an Obama-era policy that let third parties file accessibility complaints against building owners indefinitely, even when the alleged design flaws originated with a previous owner years or decades earlier.
HUD says the 2013 guidance forced property owners to spend more than $112 million on accessibility retrofits over the past five years simply to qualify for Federal Housing Administration refinancing—money the agency argues was diverted from expanding the affordable housing supply.
Under the old policy, current owners could be held strictly liable in perpetuity for architectural deviations made by the original builder, regardless of how much time had passed. The new framework starts the clock on the day a building receives its certificate of occupancy. Complainants now have one year to file an administrative claim with HUD, and private lawsuits in federal court must be filed within two years of construction’s completion. Once those windows close, owners are protected from retroactive, building-wide liability—though individual tenants can still seek reasonable modifications for their own needs at any time under the Fair Housing Act.
The Cost of the Old Rule
HUD’s updated guidance calls the prior interpretation “egregiously wrong,” saying it “exceeded the Department’s statutory authority, failed to increase the supply of accessible housing for individuals with disabilities, and imposed an unwarranted and unduly prejudicial burden on American homebuilders.”
Internal transaction data cited by HUD shows one third-party inspection firm alone identified nearly $49 million in required accessibility fixes across roughly 500 refinance deals since 2019—averaging more than $100,000 in deficiencies per property. Lenders separately told the agency the policy created lasting uncertainty in the market: one major affordable multifamily lender attributed more than $1 billion in lost HUD-insured loan volume over the last four years to the guidance, reporting recurring deal dropouts and borrowers avoiding FHA financing altogether.
Legal Reasoning
HUD officials point to Congress’s own text. When lawmakers amended the Fair Housing Act in 1988, they set a one-year deadline for administrative complaints. Officials argue the 2013 guidance ignored that deadline by allowing enforcement decades after a project’s completion.
The rollback also brings federal policy in line with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which ruled that a failure to properly design a building is a violation that ends once construction is finished and a certificate of occupancy is issued.
“For too long, unnecessary government policies have contributed to the skyrocketing cost of building, buying, and renting a home. Today’s action rescinds unnecessary and expensive liability created by legal theories that have no basis in law,” said HUD Secretary Scott Turner. “The Trump Administration is following the law as written by Congress and interpreted by the courts. We will continue to repeal and replace guidance that does not honor these lawful commitments while ensuring Americans can access affordable housing.”
“Congress wrote a clear statute of limitations into the Fair Housing Act. That limitation is part of the law, not a suggestion for sly bureaucrats to disregard,” said Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Craig Trainor. “We will not allow Obama-era guidance to rewrite the Fair Housing Act, expose American builders to indefinite legal liability, and make housing less affordable for hardworking American families.”
