TOPLINE
President Trump promised on Wednesday to residents of the suburbs of the United States that the value of their homes would not be affected by crime or low-income housing construction after an Obama-era rule designed To limit housing segregation will end last week, the culmination of years of deregulation, Trump’s effort and an appeal to suburban voters.
President Trump celebrated the end of an Obama-era rule on Wednesday.
KEY FACTS
Trump tweeted early Wednesday afternoon:
“Your home prices will go up according to the market, and crime will go down. I have rescinded the Obama-Biden AFFH rule. Enjoy! “Trump added.
Trump refers to the Affirmatively Fairer Fair Housing Rule of 2015, which President Obama implemented to fight housing discrimination.
The rule required local governments receiving federal housing funds to create plans to combat housing discrimination, which advocates say helped strengthen the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
Housing Secretary Ben Carson appears to have begun repealing the AFFH rule as of July 23, according to a press release, meaning that Trump’s tweets came six days after the fact.
Carson called the AFFH rule “complicated, expensive, and ineffective,” and touted the Trump Administration’s “opportunity zone” initiative, which offers capital gains tax discounts for investors who send money to one of the the more than 8,000 designated areas.
Opportunity zones have been criticized by Congress as a means of profit for wealthy real estate developers, including some tied to the current administration.
Head of critics
Protests on social media over Trump’s tweets started almost immediately, what users described as anti-BIPOC. “Trump is a racist jerk,” Chicago Councilman Carlos Ramírez-Rosa tweeted. Leah Greenberg, executive director of the activist group of the Indivisible Congress Team, called Trump’s tweets “an active campaign for housing segregation.”
Key background
Trump’s tweets come amid less suburban support for his November re-election campaign, CNBC reported. The AFFH standard would effectively encourage communities to build more apartments, NPR reported, which in turn would encourage smaller wage earners to move to those areas. However, the rule did not specifically target the suburbs. The Trump administration gutted AFFH in 2018, and Carson had previously criticized the rule during a 2017 hearing. New York TimesTrump’s opportunity zones were enacted as part of his 2017 tax cuts. Times In November 2019, it was reported that while some of the money went to more depressed areas in Pennsylvania and Alabama, most of it has appeared in rapidly gentrifying cities like Atlanta, Houston and Miami.
Tangent
In 1973, the Justice Department filed a civil rights case against the Trump company, accusing him of violating the Fair Housing Act by not renting to black tenants. The case was settled in 1975, with Trump signing an agreement that his company would not discriminate against future tenants or home buyers, as well as placing advertisements informing minorities of their rights to obtain a home on their properties. At the time, Trump said the deal did not mean he admitted to wrongdoing, while the Justice Department celebrated it as “one of the most far-reaching deals” it had ever negotiated.
Further reading
Trump tells suburban voters that they will ‘no longer be bothered’ by low-income housing (CNBC)
Seeking suburban votes, Trump will repeal the rule that combats racial bias in housing (NPR)
Lawmakers Increase Criticism of “Opportunity Zone” Tax Exemption (New York Times)
Inside the government’s racial prejudice case against Donald Trump’s company and how he fought against it (Washington Post)
