The federal government, states, and local communities have been required by law since 1968 to work to undo the segregated communities that federal housing policy created in the first place. But it has only been for the last three years that communities were equipped with the tools and guidance needed to meet their obligations under the law. After several years of considerable input from stakeholders across the spectrum, the previous administration’s fair housing rule made the strongest effort in decades to reverse harmful patterns of segregation and discriminatory practices in communities across the country.
Today’s ruling by the court is deeply disappointing. It allows HUD to scrap the years of extensive input and intensive work that went into the fair housing rule and instead revert to the agency’s previous flawed and failed system. In doing so, Secretary Carson will continue his pattern of attempts to weaken and disrupt the agency’s responsibility to uphold its fair housing duties.
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Established in 1974 by Cushing N. Dolbeare, the National Low Income Housing Coalition is dedicated solely to achieving socially just public policy that assures people with the lowest income in the United States have affordable and decent homes.