Best practices in housing mobility – client engagement: This new policy brief from Mobility Works and PRRAC highlights successful efforts to organize client advisory groups to work with housing mobility program staff and leadership in Baltimore, Dallas, and Chicago.
Housing Trust Fund regulations: We submitted comments last week on the interim rule governing the implementation of the Housing Trust Fund. Stronger civil rights rules and civil rights data collection are crucial to expand housing choices for low-income families and to prevent the program from increasing segregation.
Cross-government racial equity standards: We also sent comments to the Office of Management and Budget in response to a request for input on President Biden’s executive order requiring racial equity assessments across all agencies in the executive branch. Our comments focused on the challenge of finding appropriate metrics for measuring equity in housing and education, in the context of the federal affirmatively furthering fair housing mandate.
Cautionary note on exclusionary zoning: We joined the Lawyers Committee, PolicyLink, NHLP, and other members of the Alliance for Housing Justice, in a letter to the White House, HUD, and Congress on proposed federal incentives to address restrictive zoning, pointing out that all land-use barriers are not created equal, and some may be protective for low-income communities facing displacement pressure.
Hopes for housing infrastructure: We submitted joint civil rights recommendations on the housing infrastructure bill to the House Financial Services Committee (along with NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Lawyers Committee, National Housing Law Project, National Fair Housing Housing Alliance, and the National Low Income Housing Coalition), urging the Committee to embed principles of affirmatively furthering fair housing into the bill.
