Trump Administration Postpones an Obama Fair-Housing Rule

The following article by Emily Badger and John Eligon was posted on the New York Times website January 4, 2018:

The secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson, left foreground, leading other cabinet members and President Trump in a prayer last month. Credit Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Undermining another Obama-era initiative, the Trump administration plans to delay enforcement of a federal housing rule that requires communities to address patterns of racial residential segregation.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development, in a notice to be published Friday in the Federal Register, says it will suspend until 2020 the requirement that communities analyze their housing segregation and submit plans to reverse it, as a condition of receiving billions of federal dollars in block grants and housing aid. The notice tells cities already at work on the detailed plans required by the rule that they no longer need to submit them, and the department says it will stop reviewing plans that have already been filed.

The move does not repeal the 2015 rule, a product of years of pressure from civil rights groups and review by the Obama administration. HUD argues that it is trying to respond to cities that have struggled with the rule’s requirements, delaying it for several years while the agency further invests in the tools communities use to assess their housing patterns. Continue reading “Trump Administration Postpones an Obama Fair-Housing Rule”