AFFH moves forward: PRRAC joined other civil rights and housing organizations this week with formal comments on HUD’s proposed Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, a new and streamlined version of the 2015 rule suspended by the Trump Administration. Our comments focused on the potential of the new rule for influencing policies at public housing authorities and state governments – which are both key players in either perpetuating or undoing longstanding patterns of segregation. In addition to our main comments, we contributed to comments on improved HUD data, comments on strengthening the connections between housing and school policy in the new rule, and comments suggesting additional legal authority. We have also collected selected comments of other civil rights and housing groups on our AFFH page.
Other resources
New EJ EO: Last Friday, President Biden signed an historic “Executive Order on Revitalizing Our Nation’s Commitment to Environmental Justice for All,” which promises an “all of government” effort to address environmental injustice, including past and future environmental harms inflicted on communities of color. Many long-time (and long-struggling) champions of the environmental justice movement were invited to the White House Rose Garden for the signing ceremony. Congratulations to all!
More evidence on gentrification: Lance Freeman’s latest article, “Where Do They Go? The Destinations of Residents Moving from Gentrifying Neighborhoods” reexamines rates of moving by families in gentrifying vs non-gentrifying neighborhoods, and also tracks the destinations of families who do move (Freeman, a UPenn professor, is on PRRAC’s Social Science Advisory Board).
Innovative comment portal for tenants: PolicyLink and the People’s Tech Project have created an innovative website that gives tenants an easy way to tell their own stories about unfair and discriminatory tenant screening practices, in response to the “Request for Information” on tenant screening practices recently posted by the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Federal Register.
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