RFP # 25-090 Fair Housing Testing Initiative - Statewide

The Civil Rights Department (CRD) is the largest state civil rights agency in the country, operating out of six (6) offices throughout California. CRD¿s mission is to protect the people of California from unlawful discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, and state-funded and state-administered programs and activities, and from hate violence and human trafficking. To accomplish this mission, CRD receives, investigates, conciliates, mediates, and prosecutes complaints of alleged violations of the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), Unruh Civil Rights Act, Disabled Persons Act, and statutes prohibiting discrimination in state-funded activities and programs, among other civil rights laws. CRD also enforces the Ralph Civil Rights Act, which forbids acts of violence or threats of violence because of a person¿s actual or perceived sex/gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions) gender identity, gender expression, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, citizenship, primary language, immigration status, political affiliation, or position in a labor dispute. CRD enforces the civil protections in California¿s civil rights laws. It does not enforce the criminal provisions of California¿s civil rights laws. CRD is empowered to act as a ¿peacemaker¿ when communities experience conflict or tension as a result of discriminatory practices. CRD mediation services can be made available upon the request of a state or local public body, or upon the request of any person directly affected by a civil rights dispute, disagreement, or difficulty that threatens ¿peaceful relations¿ in a community. In addition, CRD has an outreach and education program designed to increase and promote awareness to the civil rights protections that CRD enforces. To learn more about CRD visit: www.calcivilrights.ca.gov CRD is seeking innovative and creative proposals from fair housing experts that describe how you will design and implement a plan for a fair housing testing program to address systemic housing discrimination under the FEHA, statewide. With respect to housing, FEHA prohibits discrimination on the bases of race, color, ancestry, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, national origin, source of income, familial status, disability, and immigration status, among other characteristics. Fair housing testing (sometimes known as audit testing or matched-pairs testing) is an investigative tool that provides an opportunity to observe the ordinary or ¿unvarnished¿ business practices of housing providers. A test involves a protected group tester referred to as a ¿protected tester¿ and a majority group tester referred to as a ¿control tester,¿ who both visit the same housing unit for rent or for sale. The testers¿ characteristics match with respect to income, employment, and other characteristics to ensure that there is no business justification for any differences in treatment. Such testing is one way to determine whether all housing consumers are being afforded the same information, service, treatment, and access without regard to the characteristics protected by fair housing laws.1 For example, the results from our 2024 fair housing testing in Los Angeles County documented that over 50% of housing providers tested showed evidence of discrimination against Section 8 voucher users