How the Drug War Undermined Fair Housing—and What to Do About It

This article was written in collaboration with Aron Goldman.

Across the country, leaders of every political persuasion are searching for ways to confront the affordability crisis. Yet while affordability has become a defining challenge, one longstanding barrier remains almost entirely invisible.

The Thurmond Amendment, passed in 1988, is a carve-out of the Fair Housing Act that enables landlords—and the algorithmic screening software they increasingly rely on—to summarily deny housing to applicants with any conviction related to selling drugs, regardless of the circumstances.

The result has been to undermine housing affordability. If the nation is to act and start making housing more affordable, removing this barrier is one obvious step to take.

A Civil Rights Law with a Segregationist Back Door

To understand the origin of this legislative barrier, we must look back to the notorious “War on Drugs,” along with the hysteria and racialized fear that shaped federal policymaking in the 1980s. Crack cocaine was a genuine crisis in many communities, but in Washington, DC, it became a political opportunity.

As The Washington Post noted at the time, Congress learned that attaching punitive anti-drug measures to legislation was a cunning way to showcase toughness while forcing their opposition into difficult votes that could serve as political fodder on the campaign trail.

These provisions had little grounding in public safety and were crafted to produce sound bites rather than sound policy. The Thurmond Amendment was born out of this environment: a political tactic in a symbolic war, with real people paying the price for decades to come.

Introduced at the last minute into an 1988 amendment package designed to strengthen the Fair Housing Act—a measure passed in 1968 shortly after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., aiming to end racial discrimination in housing—the Thurmond Amendment reversed that logic for a single class of people.

Authored by Republican Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a segregationist, the amendment reintroduced exclusion into federal housing policy under the guise of public safety. It made no distinction between violent and nonviolent conduct, between high-level drug trafficking and a teenage mistake, between a recent offense and one from decades prior, or even between simple possession of drugs and “intent to distribute”—a line drawn by prosecutors that is often arbitrary and subjective.

Crucially, this exclusion in housing applies only to drug-selling crimes. Assault, robbery, armed burglary, and even homicide are not singled out under federal law in this manner. This inversion of logic, treating people with drug convictions more harshly than those with violent offenses, was a byproduct of what Ian Haney López called dog-whistle politics, wherein politicians could enact racist policies without explicitly mentioning race. It remains embedded in the federal housing code today.

The Human Reality Behind the Law

Because the carve-out applies only to drug-selling convictions, the burden falls disproportionately on Black Americans who bore the brunt of drug war enforcement. As Chicago criminal justice advocate and nonprofit leader Richard Wallace, writing for NPQ, observed, “It is hard to overstate the social and economic consequences of the War on Drugs on Black communities.” The Thurmond Amendment is one of these consequences—and it is structurally racist in both origin and effect.

Across the country, millions of people with old drug convictions…remain shut out of housing…because of a federal carve-out that predates the internet.

For me personally, the issue is not theoretical. Over 25 years ago, as a teenager, I was convicted of a low-level drug offense. I served my time, started a small business, earned a degree from Princeton University, received a full pardon, and have since spent my career building on-ramps to opportunities for youth and others who are disadvantaged.

Yet three years ago, when I applied to rent an apartment in the community I relocated to for work, I was denied explicitly because of my 25-year-old conviction.

There was no review, no context. The screening system flagged the offense and rejected the application outright. No amount of rehabilitation, achievement, societal contribution, or financial stability mattered; the algorithm did not care who I was; it only considered what I did decades ago.

I am hardly unique. Across the country, millions of people with old drug convictions confront similar barriers. Many are parents raising children. Many are veterans and people in recovery. They have stable employment and deep community ties. Yet they remain shut out of housing not because of any real quantifiable risk, but because of a federal carve-out that predates the internet.

The Thurmond Amendment and the Affordability Crisis

The Thurmond Amendment doesn’t just stigmatize a subset of renters; it functionally shrinks their access to our nation’s limited housing supply. Millions of qualified applicants find their ability to access quality schools, proximity to job centers, and public amenities foreclosed, due to sometimes decades-old drug convictions.

But the exclusion creates another, less visible layer of harm: It raises the cost of searching for and obtaining housing.

Because today’s algorithmic screening software often indiscriminately enforces exclusion, applicants with drug convictions often must apply repeatedly to apartments just to find a landlord willing to consider them. Each attempt comes with nonrefundable application fees, often $150 to $200 per unit; repeated credit pulls, which lower credit scores and make every subsequent denial even more costly; and lost time and lost wages, hours spent touring units and filling out forms.

These artificial frictions all make it harder and more expensive to access a basic need. A policy designed in 1988 to “get tough” on drug dealers now operates as a nationwide tollbooth on housing access.

If the affordability crisis is in part a supply crisis, then the Thurmond Amendment is a supply-shrinking machine masquerading as public safety. The people paying the price are the ones who can least afford the consequences.

A Nonprofit Sector Blind Spot

Despite the widespread impact of exclusion, until recently no coordinated effort had emerged to remove the Thurmond Amendment from the Fair Housing Act. In part, this is because the nonprofit sector has unintentionally siloed itself by issue area:

• Housing organizations tend to focus on supply, zoning, eviction prevention, and tenant protections
• Criminal justice groups tend to focus on sentencing reform and reentry but often overlook structural barriers in housing that remain long after incarceration ends
• Drug policy advocates concentrate on harm reduction and treatment, not on the collateral housing penalties that persist
• Philanthropy often funds housing, drug policy, and criminal justice separately, missing the ways they intersect

These blind spots have consequences. Homelessness increases, barriers to employment increase, access to opportunity is limited, and affordability declines, all while an underlying cause remains in the fine print of federal housing law.

Fair housing cannot exist alongside permanent exclusion.

Fortunately, a growing coalition is now arising to repeal the Thurmond Amendment. Participants include the Drug Policy Alliance, Dream.Org, Americans for Prosperity, and the National Housing Law Project. Reentry organizations, veteran groups, drug policy reformers, landlords, and survivors’ organizations are also beginning to recognize its sweeping impact.

These efforts understand a core truth: Fair housing cannot exist alongside permanent exclusion.

What Nonprofits and Funders Can Do Now

There are two urgent steps nonprofits and philanthropy can take:

First, affordability must be seen as intersectional. The sector’s inability to understand and coordinate around this intersectional harm is precisely why such a nonsensical policy like the Thurmond Amendment has lasted so long.

Second, nonprofits should share information as often as possible. Nonprofits can use research briefs, community events, and public education campaigns to surface and highlight the diverse and intersecting human and structural consequences of this carve-out. Visibility creates momentum, and momentum creates political and moral pressure.

We cannot allow a policy rooted in the hysteria and racialized politics of 1988 to dictate who gets access to housing in 2025 and beyond.

And the potential coalition for change is broader than most realize—removing the Thurmond Amendment expands housing access, lowers costs, strengthens families, and restores fairness, without undermining public safety or a landlord’s ability to make a rental decision based on market measures of risk. A cross-sector coalition isn’t just possible; it’s the most natural path forward.

When so many constituencies stand to benefit, the only forces sustaining the status quo are the artificial silos that we create.

A Relic We Can No Longer Ignore

If we are serious about building an affordable, equitable future, we cannot allow a policy rooted in the hysteria and racialized politics of 1988 to dictate who gets access to housing in 2025 and beyond. The Thurmond Amendment is a ghost of the War on Drugs, haunting millions of families and exacerbating the housing affordability crisis.

A cornerstone of a fair legal system is proportionality: The punishment must fit the offense. Denying a person housing for life for a crime committed long ago, for conduct that may now even be legal in some places—such as the sale of cannabis—fails this test.

And if affordability is truly a national priority, then the first step is simple: Stop shrinking the housing supply and undermining affordability based on prejudices and stereotypes of the past.