Ben Carson moves to roll back Obama-era fair housing rule

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson is taking new steps to roll back an Obama-era rule intended to combat housing segregation.

On Monday, the Trump administration formally began the process to revamp a 2015 rule that required cities and towns to examine historic patterns of segregation and create plans to combat it, or else lose federal funding.

The administration argued that the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule hinders he development of affordable housing.

The current rule is "suffocating investment in some of our most distressed neighborhoods that need our investment the most," Carson said in a statement. "We do not have to abandon communities in need."

Sara Pratt, a former Obama official who helped develop the rule, said that the Trump administration's moves would enable communities to ignore long-standing barriers to fair housing and integration.

"You're going back to communities willfully blinding themselves to patterns of segregation," said Pratt, whose law firm is representing a coalition of groups suing the Trump administration for its earlier efforts to suspend the rule. "Without this rule, communities will not do the work to eliminate discrimination and segregation."

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