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HUD Seeks to Further Weaken Enforcement of Fair Housing Laws
Ben Carson, somehow the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, is one of many vile individuals appointed by Trump over the past three years who hate the very government department they run and work daily to destroy it. Think Pruitt / Wheeler at the EPA, Zinke at Interior, DeVos at Education, and on and on.
HUD on Tuesday [1/7/20] published its proposed rule to roll back fair housing enforcement. The public now has 60 days to comment on the proposal....
Among the changes sought by the Department of Housing and Urban Development: redefining what it means to promote fair housing, eliminating the assessment used to address barriers to racial integration....
...the proposal reduces the financial pressure on local governments to end residential segregation, as required by the 1968 Fair Housing Act...
The Trump administration rule change will reduce the burden on local governments to meet their fair housing obligations, further scaling back civil rights enforcement.
The 2015 regulations required communities to take meaningful action against long-standing segregation by analyzing housing patterns, concentrated poverty and disparities in access to transportation, jobs and good schools.
... the proposed new rule represents a dangerous and fundamental misunderstanding of fair housing issues. The provision known as Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing was put in place five decades ago to prompt communities and public housing authorities that receive federal funds to address the harmful effects of their historical actions....
Instead of working to identify and overcome patterns of housing segregation and inequality, the Trump Administration pretends they don’t exist.
Fair housing advocates unsuccessfully sued HUD in 2018 over what they characterized as its failure to enforce fair housing laws.
Thomas Silverstein, a fair housing attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said that “discrimination and segregation will continue unabated when HUD doesn’t provide meaningful fair housing oversight of local governments.”