Civil rights restoration continues at HUD: with the release last week of the “Reinstatement of HUD’s Discriminatory Effects Standard,” HUD continues to repair the damage done to the Fair Housing Act in the prior administration. The Trump administration’s version of the rule, which would have eviscerated the standard, never went into effect because of the preliminary injunction in Massachusetts Fair Housing Center v. HUD, filed in 2020 just before the rule was to go into effect. The new final rule formally re-enshrines the original 2013 rule, which had technically still been in effect pending the injunction. We also look forward to seeing a final AFFH rule later this year, continued expansion of the Small Area Fair Market rent rule, possibly a new metric on how PHAs are evaluated by HUD every year, and maybe even new guidelines on source of income discrimination? We have just updated our HUD civil rights timeline to reflect some of this progress…
Other Resources
Lessons for AFFH from California: The Terner Center at UC-Berkeley has posted a policy brief about lessons learned from California’s independent adoption of the AFFH standard as a state law in 2018.
The HUD Community Choice Demonstration has released a toolkit and model forms for new mobility programs, derived from successful mobility programs around the country. HUD will be hosting an overview/introductory webinar on the Toolkit April 26 – register here.
Tenant protections USA: Freddie Mac has just released a National Survey of Tenant Protections Under State Landlord Tenant Acts, as part of the White House initiative on renters rights.
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