These include patterns of segregation, racially concentrated areas of poverty, disparities in access to better opportunity, and disproportionate needs in housing.Except, for now, these ongoing self-assessments may be suspended altogether, which could mean a return to the status quo before the more-stringent AFFH requirement: Without a deadline that could cost them federal funding, many communities may fail to follow through on their commitments. Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world.The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development says that the extension simply gives communities more time to address a ruling that some have struggled to follow.
HUD is revising the onerous reporting requirements and codified language of the 2015 regulation. In the Equal Rights Center’s home community of Washington, DC, residential segregation is readily apparent.
“But they rose to the challenge.”The Trump administration is rolling back the deadline for a key rule on fair housing made into law under President Barack Obama—a change with potentially broad consequences for racial segregation.But the review was ultimately narrow.
“The city would agree that it did feel like a compressed timeline to put together their full Assessment of Fair Housing in a short time,” Reyes says. HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing policy required communities to confront racial inequities in housing.
This illustrates that HUD’s obligation to affirmatively further fair housing is very much still relevant and necessary today. The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regulation, AFFH for short, is like Affirmative Action for community planning. Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing: Proposed Rule Fails to Address Discrimination and Segregation. Now, local and county governments may postpone this work, turning to more immediate deadlines, to the detriment of families languishing in substandard housing or racially concentrated poverty.With these Assessments of Fair Housing—and with AFFH compliance more broadly—local and county governments must analyze housing segregation by a number of factors. “The more realistic part of me says that public agencies around the country have many, many competing demands on their time.”This means that HUD postponed a rule governing hundreds of city and county governments based on a problem encountered by about 17 of them—a problem that all of them ultimately resolved. The proposed rule refines existing requirements so the individuals, organizations, and state and local governments implementing HUD programs better understand their requirements under the Fair Housing Act and have the tools they need to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing, ensuring that every American has the opportunity to live in the community of their choice without facing discrimination.