• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About
  • Press Room
  • Poverty & Race Journal
  • Donate
  • Publications
    • PRRAC Publications & PRRAC Authors
    • PRRAC Policy Briefs
    • PRRAC Advocacy Resources
    • PRRAC Advocacy Letters
  • Events
  • Contact

PRRAC — Connecting Research to Advocacy

Poverty & Race Research Action Council

MENUMENU
  • Fair Housing
    • Fair Housing Homepage
    • Federal Housing Advocacy – by Program
    • Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH)
    • Housing Mobility (Section 8)
    • Source of Income Discrimination
    • Low Income Housing Tax Credit
    • Fair Housing and Community Development
    • Civil Rights and Housing Finance Reform
  • School Diversity
  • Environmental Justice
  • Special Projects
    • Civil Rights History
    • Civil Rights & The Administrative State
    • Expanding the "Social Housing" Sector
    • Housing-School Nexus
    • International Human Rights and U.S. Civil Rights Policy
    • One Nation Indivisible: School Diversity, Immigrant Integration, and Multi-Racial Coalitions
    • PRRAC in the Courts
    • Alliance Housing Justice
  • Search
    • Search

You are here: Home / Browse PRRAC Content / Press Releases / PRESS RELEASE: PRRAC Denounces HUD’s Effort to Ignore Its Civil Rights Obligation Under the Law

PRESS RELEASE: PRRAC Denounces HUD’s Effort to Ignore Its Civil Rights Obligation Under the Law

January 7, 2020 by

HUD Announces Rule Seeking to Rollback 2015 AFFH Rule and Radically Change the Definition of Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.

WASHINGTON, DC – On January 7, 2020, PRRAC released the following statement:

“Today HUD announced a major step in its ongoing rollback of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) Rule, a key civil rights regulation implementing the Fair Housing Act.

“Housing discrimination and segregation have a severe impact on life opportunity across generations. Under the AFFH statutory provision, the federal government and its grantees have a duty to address these problems and to advance the purposes of the Act: to take proactive steps to overcome patterns of housing segregation, promote true housing choice, and foster inclusive communities. For decades, the AFFH mandate largely languished as HUD took little enforcement action. After many years of work by fair housing advocates building on the foundation of the Civil Rights Movement, the Obama administration released the AFFH rule in 2015. That rule provided clarity and real teeth to the mandate and established a new robust framework for fair housing planning (the Assessment of Fair Housing) that yielded promising results during its early rollout. However, in 2018, the Trump administration abruptly suspended the implementation of the AFFH rule, reverting to a flawed discretionary process with little oversight other than self-certifications (the Analysis of Impediments) – a process that both HUD and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found to be grossly ineffective.

“HUD has now gone even further, releasing a new draft rule, which reflects an ideology that ignores structural discrimination and its human cost, as well as our government’s statutory responsibility to address the ongoing legacies of intentional segregation.  This proposed rule would dramatically change the regulatory definition of ‘AFFH’ to one that is untethered from the statute’s focus on residential segregation. Instead, HUD is seeking to use the rule as a platform for local deregulation: ostensibly doing so to make housing more affordable, but in fact, promoting strategies that will harm economically vulnerable people – such as removing rent regulations and environmental protections.

“HUD’s new rule would also eliminate the community participation and engagement requirement, which requires grantees to proactively seek input and inform their constituents about this process. Further, HUD’s new rule would also erase the requirement that its grantees complete a fair housing-focused analysis that would allow for adequate consideration of fair housing issues and review by independent advocacy groups or by HUD.  Instead, it requires only a streamlined assertion of three action steps designated by the jurisdiction. Additionally, public housing authorities, which serve millions of Americans and play a crucial role in either reinforcing segregation or promoting integration and improving life opportunities, no longer have substantive obligations under this draft rule.”

More information on the AFFH obligation and the 2015 regulation can be found here.

Filed Under: Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, Press Releases

You might also like…

How States Can Affirmatively Further Fair Housing: Key Leverage Points and Best Practices (PRRAC, January 2022)
“A New Vision for Fair Housing in the Real Estate Industry – Part II: An Actionable Fair Housing Strategy for Real Estate Agents & Agencies” by Allison K. Bethel & Maria Krysan (May – Sept 2021 P&R Issue)

Primary Sidebar

PRRAC Updates

PRRAC Update: President’s budget detail; buses and schools; PRRAC is hiring! (Mar 16, 2023)

PRRAC Update: 2023 housing mobility conference; addressing real exclusionary zoning (Mar 2, 2023)

PRRAC Update: AFFH comments; UN visit (Feb. 9, 2023)

Previous Updates...

PRRAC in the News

Dayton approves ‘source of income’ protections; landlords rip Section 8 program

March 3, 2023

Your segregated town might finally be in trouble

January 23, 2023

Relentless Rents Leave Few Choices for Americans Relying on Assistance

January 5, 2023

Milwaukee County housing voucher recipients will get an increase in subsidies next month

September 13, 2022

Previous Posts...

PRRAC on Twitter

Tweets by @PRRAC_DC

Poverty & Race Journal

Footer

PRRAC – Poverty & Race Research Action Council

The Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC) is a civil rights law and policy organization based in Washington, D.C. Our mission is to promote research-based advocacy strategies to address structural inequality and disrupt the systems that disadvantage low-income people of color. PRRAC was founded in 1989, through an initiative of major civil rights, civil liberties, and anti-poverty groups seeking to connect advocates with social scientists working at the intersection of race and poverty…Read More

Archives

Resources at PRRAC

  • Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing
  • Environmental Justice
  • Fair Housing
  • Fair Housing & Community Development
  • Low Income Housing Tax Credit
  • Poverty & Race Journal
  • PRRAC Update
  • School Diversity
  • Housing Choice Voucher Mobility
  • PRRAC in The Courts

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in var _ctct_m = "7608c7e98e90af7d6ba8b5fd4d901424"; //static.ctctcdn.com/js/signup-form-widget/current/signup-form-widget.min.js

PRRAC — Connecting Research to Advocacy

  • Fair Housing
    • Fair Housing Homepage
    • Federal Housing Advocacy – by Program
    • Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH)
    • Housing Mobility (Section 8)
    • Source of Income Discrimination
    • Low Income Housing Tax Credit
    • Fair Housing and Community Development
    • Civil Rights and Housing Finance Reform
  • School Diversity
  • Environmental Justice
  • Special Projects
    • Civil Rights History
    • Civil Rights & The Administrative State
    • Expanding the “Social Housing” Sector
    • Housing-School Nexus
    • International Human Rights and U.S. Civil Rights Policy
    • One Nation Indivisible: School Diversity, Immigrant Integration, and Multi-Racial Coalitions
    • PRRAC in the Courts
    • Alliance Housing Justice
  • Search
  • About
  • Press Room
  • Poverty & Race Journal
  • Donate
  • Publications
    • PRRAC Publications & PRRAC Authors
    • PRRAC Policy Briefs
    • PRRAC Advocacy Resources
    • PRRAC Advocacy Letters
  • Events
  • Contact