Our Programs

Strategic Impact & Compliance 

Expanding Opportunity

Advancing Fair Housing

Strengthening Compliance

The Work

Strategic Impact & Compliance is NFHA’s multidisciplinary division focused on advancing fair housing, strengthening compliance, reducing risk, and expanding equitable access to housing, credit, insurance, and related services. 

The division assesses policies, practices, products, programs, and technologies across the full rental and homeownership lifecycle—from marketing, outreach, and tenant screening through origination, pricing, underwriting, appraisal, servicing, and insurance. Our work includes compliance reviews, testing and investigations, research and market analysis, program and product development, training, technical assistance, and implementation support. 

We help partners turn fair housing obligations and equity commitments into practices and systems that work in practice and hold up under regulatory and public scrutiny. We also help government agencies and civil rights organizations strengthen their capacity to investigate discrimination, enforce fair housing laws, build inclusive communities, and respond to emerging issues, including responsible AI and other technologies. 

By the Numbers

Who We Work With

Government Agencies

Strategic Impact & Compliance trains investigators and enforcement staff, builds institutional capacity, and provides sustained technical assistance rather than a one-time report. Our work with federal, state, and local agencies includes fair housing planning and enforcement, redlining, disparate impact, appraisal bias, fair lending, responsible AI, automated decision systems, program design, and other emerging civil rights issues. 

Financial Institutions and Insurers

We review fair housing and fair lending risk across policies, products, practices, systems, and outcomes, including underwriting, pricing, marketing, servicing, insurance, and other operations. Our work includes compliance assessments, testing and monitoring, policy and procedure reviews, Community Credit Needs Assessments and other market analyses, customized training, and support developing and implementing corrective actions, products, programs, and community-informed strategies. 

The goal is not simply to identify risk. We help institutions strengthen compliance while expanding equitable access to housing, credit, and insurance. 

Housing Providers, Property Managers, and Developers

We assess tenant screening and selection, reasonable accommodation and modification practices, occupancy policies, marketing, technologies, and other housing operations. We help organizations identify fair housing barriers, strengthen policies and procedures, train staff, implement corrective measures, and build effective monitoring systems. We also support housing developers and public-private partners with fair housing considerations related to site selection, design and construction, accessibility, affirmatively furthering fair housing, and the development of inclusive housing strategies. 

Nonprofit and Community Development Organizations

Strategic Impact & Compliance provides long-term capacity building, research, training, and program design support so the compliance infrastructure lives inside the organization when the engagement ends. That infrastructure may include stronger policies and procedures, trained staff, monitoring and testing tools, implementation plans, and internal systems designed to sustain fair housing compliance and equitable housing outcomes. 

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Why NFHA

NFHA brings together civil rights enforcement, legal, policy, research, technology, programmatic, and community-based expertise that is typically spread across multiple organizations. 

  • Civil rights expertise grounded in enforcement. NFHA’s decades of investigation, testing, litigation, research, and advocacy provide a deep understanding of how discriminatory practices develop, how they affect communities, and how they can be prevented and remedied. 

  • From analysis to implementation. An analytics firm may identify a disparity. NFHA can examine the policy or practice behind it, help design the solution, train the people responsible for implementing it, and support implementation and monitoring. 

  • National perspective with local insight. NFHA’s network of more than 100 member organizations provides on-the-ground insight into complaints, housing barriers, community needs, and market conditions across the country. 

  • Expertise across emerging issues. NFHA has long worked at the intersection of fair housing, fair lending, appraisal bias, insurance access, tenant screening, and responsible AI—bringing civil rights expertise to both longstanding and emerging challenges. 

NFHA is mission-driven, not margin driven. Our recommendations are shaped by what will advance fair housing, strengthen compliance, and expand opportunity—not by what is easiest to sell next. 

Proof of Work

For more than 35 years, NFHA has worked with financial institutions, housing providers, insurers, government agencies, nonprofits, and community partners to strengthen compliance and develop practical solutions to fair housing and fair lending challenges. 

NFHA and its research partners conducted the evidence-based study required by Washington’s Covenant Homeownership Act to examine the state’s role in housing discrimination, measure its continuing effects, evaluate potential remedies, and assess whether a race-conscious Special Purpose Credit Program was warranted. 

The research helped provide the foundation for Washington’s Covenant Homeownership Program, which has since helped finance more than 1,000 home purchases across communities throughout the state. NFHA’s work continues through statutorily required periodic updates to the study.

In 2024, NFHA was competitively selected by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to develop Building Inclusive Communities: A Planning Guide for Fair Housing Organizations. The guide provides practical strategies and tools to help fair housing organizations engage residents, leverage data and research, build coalitions, and participate meaningfully in fair housing planning and implementation. 

NFHA conducted focus groups and interviews with local community partners and drew on the experience of its nationwide member network to develop best practices for fair housing planning, community engagement, and affirmatively furthering fair housing. 

NFHA provided strategic, legal, training, technical assistance, and implementation support to the GroundBreak Coalition and its partners working to expand equitable access to housing, capital, and wealth-building opportunities. Our work helps participating organizations design and sustain equitable housing initiatives while navigating fair housing, fair lending, and evolving legal and regulatory considerations. 

Much of NFHA’s work with financial institutions, insurers, and other private-sector partners is confidential. Across these engagements, NFHA has helped organizations assess and strengthen fair housing, fair lending, and fair insurance compliance; conduct compliance testing and monitoring; evaluate policies, products, practices, systems, and outcomes; identify community credit needs; conduct market and data analyses; develop new products and programs; train staff; and design and implement corrective strategies. 

These long-term partnerships often extend beyond identifying risk. NFHA works with institutions to translate findings into practical changes that strengthen compliance, address disparities, reduce discriminatory risk, and expand equitable access to housing, credit, and insurance. 

Who Leads This Work

Oneshia Herring, Senior Vice President & Counsel for Strategic Impact & Compliance, leads the division. She brings 16 years of experience in civil rights law, fair housing and fair lending enforcement, compliance, policy, and strategic advisory work. Before joining NFHA, she served in senior leadership within the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, leading complex civil rights matters and helping shape enforcement strategy. Her experience spans government, policy, and nonprofit leadership, with a focus on addressing discrimination, strengthening institutional practices, and expanding equitable housing opportunity.

Morgan Williams, Senior Counsel, brings more than 14 years of NFHA experience, including prior service as General Counsel for most of that time. His work spans fair housing enforcement, investigations, compliance, federal and state public policy, and legal strategy. Morgan has brought pioneering litigation and related advocacy that has changed industry practices across the rental, mortgage lending, appraisal, design and construction, insurance, and other industry sectors. Previously, he served as General Counsel of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, managing fair housing enforcement in post-Katrina New Orleans and throughout Louisiana and southern Mississippi.

Interconnected Work Streams

An engagement with NFHA is not staffed out of one department. Strategic Impact & Compliance draws on expertise across NFHA to carry complex issues from diagnosis through implementation with unmatched expertise. 

  • Enforcement/Legal. NFHA’s investigators and litigators build discrimination cases, so we can tell you what a risky practice looks like long before it becomes a complaint against you. 

  • Responsible AI Lab. NFHA researchers test the algorithmic systems used in lending, tenant screening, valuation, and insurance, and they publish what they find. 

  • Public Policy. NFHA’s policy team works federal and state rulemaking, so we can tell you where the rules are heading instead of only where they sit today. 

  • Housing & Community Development. NFHA program staff design and implement neighborhood stabilization programs and evaluate tools like special purpose credit programs, which are the skills that turn a vision for the future into something you can actually launch. 

  • Education & Outreach. NFHA educators build curriculum for audiences that run from frontline leasing agents to bank boards. 

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