Milwaukee Community Journal, July 27, 2020: Leading Civil Rights & Housing Groups Condemn President’s Effort to Gut Fair Housing, Use of Incendiary Racial Rhetoric for Political Gain
Today, a coalition of civil rights, affordable housing and consumer advocacy organizations condemned the move by the Trump administration to eliminate a critical tool for addressing systemic racism and segregation in our communities. In its haste to undermine this central component of the Fair Housing Act, the administration has done an end run around the normal rulemaking process and adopted a new Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule by executive fiat. This new rule is at complete odds with Congress’ intent in including this provision in the Fair Housing Act of 1968, as well as decades of case law interpreting this provision. That act requires federal agencies, especially HUD, to “affirmatively further fair housing.” Under the AFFH mandate, localities receiving federal assistance must take meaningful actions to undo decades of federal, state, and local discriminatory policies and practices that resulted in creating racially segregated, under-resourced communities that persist to this day. They must also address local policies that illegally discriminate against residents. Further, they must ensure that all neighborhoods have equitable access to high quality schools, healthy food, clean air and water, reliable transportation, quality healthcare facilities, and other community resources and amenities.
Under the Trump administration, HUD suspended the AFFH regulations finalized in 2015 – effectively gutting the only meaningful guidance since the Fair Housing Act for how states and localities should correct discriminatory housing practices and undo the harms caused by racial segregation, housing discrimination and disinvestment. Today’s action by the president is the administration’s latest effort to thwart access to fair housing and to perpetuate segregation. The coalition call on him to rescind this mandate and reinstate the 2015 AFFH regulation.
