The president warns that Biden wants to bring “who knows to his suburbs.”
In a move aimed directly at wooing conservative white suburban voters, the Trump administration officially dismantled an Obama-era rule Thursday that sought to lessen the impact of decades of racial segregation on America’s neighborhoods.
Housing Secretary Ben Carson said he was replacing the rule, known as Affirmatively, promoting fair housing, with a plan that more freely defines the fair housing standard as access to affordable and safe residence.
Following the Obama regulation review, “we found it unfeasible and, ultimately, a waste of time for localities to comply, which often results in funds being diverted from the communities that need them most,” he said in a statement released Thursday.
“The AFFH (Obama) rule was a ruse for social engineering under the guise of desegregation, essentially turning @HUDgov into a national zoning board,” he tweeted.
The decision is likely to have little immediate practical impact because the agency had already suspended enforcement of the rule in 2018. Instead, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s plan appeared to aim to stoke racial tensions in an election year.
Trump hinted at the move when he warned voters in a virtual town hall that Democratic candidate Joe Biden wants to “abolish” the suburbs and eliminate single-family zoning, “taking those who know to their suburbs, making their communities unsafe. and your home values will go down. “
A White House fact sheet distributed to journalists that described the move as “SAVING OUR SUBURBS: This action ends the federal invasion of local communities that threatened our nation’s suburbs.”
Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said Carson’s reason for dismantling the rule was “nonsense.”
“The Fair Housing Act sought to undo decades of social engineering through racist housing policies that created segregated communities,” he tweeted. “It is shameful that a HUD Sec. Is so deliberately ignorant of (housing) history and so dismissive of its obligation to respect the law.”
Thomas Silverstein, chairman and chief executive of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, called it a “complete frontal assault on the rule of law and an insult” to organizations and others who spoke out against the measure.
“The civil rights movement will fight tooth and nail,” it said in a statement.
President Barack Obama’s 2015 fair housing rule was intended to try to encourage local communities to address deep-seated patterns of home segregation that determine where Americans shop, go to school, and access health care.
Under Obama, federal money depended on the community proactively considering how to reduce inequality and provide fair housing in regulations and permitting decisions.
The New Orleans plan, for example, proposed expanding affordable housing options in areas with many economic opportunities and investing in public transportation, schools, and parks in underserved communities.
But critics said the rule was confusing and that the software tool used to submit reports and measure progress was too difficult to use. HUD under Carson suspended implementation of the rule shortly after Trump took office. The new proposal, launched last January, focused on the idea of choosing a home rather than reducing discrimination, Carson said previously.
Yentel said the push to move the plan forward now is not surprising because the Obama rule was not enforced under Trump.
“But it is abhorrent to use a critical fair housing tool to harass race during the election year, particularly during a trial period for racial injustice,” he tweeted Thursday in response to the announcement.
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