Today, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it is henceforth going to “require grant applicants seeking HUD funding to comply with state and local anti-discrimination laws that protect lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals.” Previously, HUD had required grant applicants to comply with fair housing and civil rights law, but this change explicitly ensures that those seeking HUD money follow laws protecting LGBT individuals:

“We‘re using every avenue to shut the door against discrimination,” said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. “Today, we take an important step to insist that those who seek federal funding must demonstrate that they are meeting local and state civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.”

HUD also “intends to propose new regulations that will clarify that the term ‘family’ as used to describe eligible beneficiaries of HUD’s programs include otherwise eligible LGBT individuals and couples.”

Today, more than 20 states, as well as the District of Columbia, offer protection due to sexual orientation. And this is warranted because, as Rea Carey, Executive Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund, has pointed out, “studies have documented that when test callers described themselves as gay or lesbian, apartments were more likely to be described as unavailable. Testers who presented as homosexual received fewer call-backs and fewer invitations to pursue the property than their heterosexual counterparts.”

According to a 2007 study by the Michigan Fair Housing Centers, “same-sex couples were shown less desirable properties, were quoted higher rent prices, received less favorable customer service, or encountered outright refusal to sell or rent properties. There were also circumstances during which parties suffered verbal harassment from landlords, realtors, and lenders.”

While HUD’s change is a welcome step, Congress could also be doing more to ensure that fair housing standards extend to LGBT individuals. As Shanna Smith, President of the National Fair Housing Alliance, said, “we must see a serious commitment from Congress and the Administration to enforce the [Fair Housing] Act in a systemic way rather than allowing individual case files to gather dust. Existing laws must be enforced, and they must be strengthened to include sexual orientation, gender identity and source of income.”

A review of 178 health facilities finds that relatively few institutions have adopted equal access practices toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, a situation that’s likely to change with President Obama’s April memorandum instructing the Department of Health and Human Services to develop regulations requiring all hospitals that receive federal Medicare and Medicaid funding to end discrimination in hospital visitation.

According to the report, released today by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, only a small number of major hospital chains are currently offering equal benefits to LGBT people:

The HEI 2010 rates 178 facilities on four measures of equality: patient nondiscrimination, visitation, cultural competency training and employment nondiscrimination.

Only a handful of facilities achieved credit for each of these measures. However, there were some important bright spots. We are pleased to recognize Kaiser Permanente Network as the HEI’s first top-performing network of hospitals.

This report also includes the review of a representative sample of 200 of the largest healthcare facilities nationwide, which found that 93 percent fail to protect all LGBT patients from discrimination by not including “gender identity” in their patient non-discrimination policies. More than 40 percent do not include “sexual orientation” in these policies.

While HHS is still drafting the rules and regulations to implement Obama’s memo, the Joint Commission (the organization which accredits hospitals nationwide) has announced new inclusive non-discrimination standards as part of their accreditation process and HRC has launched a campaign encouraging states to adopt the new regulation.

Still, even with the new guidelines, LGBT people won’t experience full equality within the health care system and many advocates believe the administration should have done more to address these concerns. For instance, the final version of the health care law omitted House-backed provisions that would have ended “the unfair taxation of employer-provided domestic partner health benefits,” designated “LGBT people as a health disparities population,” allowed “states to cover early HIV treatment under their Medicaid programs” and prohibited “consideration of personal characteristics unrelated to the provision of health care.” The administration never publicly encouraged the Senate to adopt these measures.