Trump administration scraps housing segregation rule

Trump administration scraps housing segregation rule
Critics call HUD's moves to jettison the Obama-era regulation "arbitrary and capricious"
Danielle McLean
May 25, 2018, 10:42 am


The Trump administration is effectively scrapping an Obama-era rule that requires cities to submit comprehensive plans on how they will address housing segregation in their own neighborhoods before receiving federal funds.

HUD’s latest decision, published in the federal register on Wednesday, essentially ensures cities and towns seeking federal funds will no longer be forced to take any steps to reduce segregation under the watchful eye of the federal agency.

Under Secretary Ben Carson, the Department of Housing and Urban Development had already delayed the implementation of the rule by several years — prompting a coalition of housing advocates and the State of New York to file a civil lawsuit against the administration.

The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule was created by the Obama administration to help enforce the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which sought to combat the racial segregation of neighborhoods. Since the passage of the Fair Housing Act, the law has been poorly enforced and housing segregation has persisted.

HUD on Wednesday got rid of a key component of the Obama-era rule: the comprehensive and uniform assessment tool cities and towns needed to complete that described how housing segregation persisted in their communities and how they planned to address it.

The assessment tool “was having a transformative positive effect in communities across the country,” said Thomas Silverstein, counsel in the Fair Housing & Community Development Project at the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under Laws, one of the groups involved in the lawsuit.

“HUD should provide local communities with the support and oversight they need to tackle entrenched barriers instead of returning to the failed policies of the past,” he said.

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https://thinkprogress.org/trump-administration-scraps-housing-segregation-rule-3455787edfe4/