Fair Housing Training for Maintenance Professionals

Written by Fair Housing Institute

When it comes to fair housing training, many housing providers sometimes overlook the need to train their maintenance staff along with everyone else.

How can this potential oversight result in a fair housing claim? Considering that maintenance professionals are often the first team members who arrive after a maintenance call comes in, and they interact with residents on a regular basis, it stands to reason that they too require fair housing training.

In this article, we will briefly discuss the different interactions that maintenance professionals may encounter as they go about their duties, along with the fair housing implications for each. We will focus on these common situations:

• Workplace relationships

• Side jobs

• Steering

• Reasonable accommodation/modification requests

Workplace Relationships

It is important to emphasize to maintenance professionals that socializing with residents outside of work is not recommended. Spending a substantial amount of time with residents outside of work can come off as favoritism and may lead to allegations such as sexual harassment. In relation to sexual harassment, a maintenance technician would want to be very careful never to come across as too friendly or make comments regarding a resident’s appearance. Therefore, a good general rule is to avoid socializing outside of work and to keep a strictly professional relationship with residents.

What about when a resident asks for a favor? Maintenance professionals should also be aware of the potential pitfalls of doing favors for residents. It can be seen as favoritism, or accidents can occur while helping a resident. This could include getting injured or even breaking an item in the process of rendering the favor. Therefore, maintenance professionals should politely turn down any such requests.

Side Jobs

Let’s face it; everyone enjoys making a little extra money. But what are the potential pitfalls of maintenance staff performing side jobs for residents? Similar to doing favors, problems may arise if a resident offers to pay an employee to help them move some things after work hours. What happens if something goes missing, the employee is injured, or something is broken? It would be difficult for the company to support the employee as this wouldn’t be considered a work-related incident. A better policy and protection would be to avoid these situations altogether and instruct maintenance professionals to politely turn down the job offer.

Steering

Illegal steering can occur when someone is encouraged or discouraged from moving into a property, a certain area of the property, or even a specific unit. When could maintenance technicians find themselves in a situation that could lead to illegal steering? Consider this scenario: a prospect is walking around the community and sees a maintenance technician and asks, “Are there a lot of families here with children”? Seems innocent enough, but responding to this question can have severe fair housing ramifications. Maintenance professionals need to have a thorough understanding of the Fair Housing Act and avoid answering questions pertaining to the kind of people living within the property in a way that could violate any of the protected categories.

Reasonable Accommodation/Modification Requests

It may seem like there would be no need for a maintenance professional to have training when it comes to reasonable accommodation or modification requests, as these are handled by the office staff, right? Not necessarily. Remember that maintenance technicians typically are the first point of contact with most residents as they are clearly visible throughout the property as they attend to their many responsibilities. It is not uncommon for a resident to approach a technician regarding a preferred parking spot or a need for a modification in their unit.

Maintenance professionals should receive training on fair housing issues so that they don’t potentially discourage a resident and violate their rights and know exactly how they should respond.

We have reviewed just a few scenarios that maintenance professionals face on a daily basis. Maintenance professionals need to be trained in fair, equal, and professional treatment of residents. A thorough training program would include both written content along with scenarios to ensure a thorough understanding. Also, role-playing continues to be an excellent way to make certain that your staff knows exactly how to respond. Fair Housing training for everyone is paramount and will serve as a protection for both them and your company.