WASHINGTON — The White House is wavering on finalizing a government policy was intended to reduce housing segregation for fear it would provoke a conservative backlash, according to a senior official.
The Biden administration’s new proposal is an overhaul of a fair housing rule that donald trump terminated in 2020. He claimed it would be “destroy” the suburbsin a characteristic display of the white identity politics that fueled his political rise.
In one of his first acts as president, Joe Biden issued a memorandum order the Department of Housing and Urban Development to bring back the fair housing rule as a way to offset decades of federal housing policies responsible for increasing racial segregation.
The department first implemented the renewed housing regulations last February as part of a formal rulemaking process that invites public comment. But because the White House is being “shit,” an official with knowledge of the process told HuffPost, the new rules have not yet been finalized.
“It’s sitting in the White House while advisers make policy and now point to the possibility of a rule in January 2025,” the official said. “The government made a promise and now it is time to fulfill it. Black and brown communities have waited long enough.”
A HUD spokesperson said it is “not accurate” to say there was any policy delay: “We are currently working on the rule” with a subagency of the Office of Management and Budget, which determines how much agency policies will cost, the spokesperson said. -spokesman told HuffPost, adding that the rule is still “going through the interagency process.”
Spokespeople for the White House and OMB declined to comment.
Sara Pratt, who worked on an earlier version of the rule as deputy assistant secretary for fair housing at HUD, said she did not have “inside information” from the White House but did not believe the rule needed further improvement.
“The amount of time that has passed that has allowed for all the internal consideration, consideration of the comments and so on, has undoubtedly happened, and the rule should be ready for publication,” Pratt, now an attorney at the civil rights firm Relman Colfax, said. said in an interview. “And there are many jurisdictions that are waiting for guidance to help local communities do what they know they should do.”
The pending regulation stems from the Fair Housing Act of 1968’s requirement that executive branch agencies administer housing programs in a way that “affirmatively promotes fair housing.”
The rule would require recipients of federal housing subsidies, such as state or local governments and public housing agencies, to collect input from residents and local groups about how a given project would help correct inequities for populations protected by civil rights laws, such as black Americans. and people with disabilities. These donations are used for housing as well as other public developments such as recreation centers, sidewalks, and street lighting.
How the Department of Housing and Urban Development explained in its notice last year: “The proposed rule empowers broader segments of the community, for example, by requiring program participants to engage with a broad cross-section of the community, which could include advocates, clergy, community organizations, local universities, resident advisory councils, health and other service providers and fair housing groups.”
Republicans criticized an earlier version of the rule, first introduced in 2015 during the Obama administration. The Trump administration terminated in 2020describing the policy as “a vehicle to force states and localities to change zoning and other land use laws” in order to benefit historically marginalized communities.
The Trump administration pointed to Westchester County — a wealthy New York suburb where HUD withheld federal construction funding for several years from 2011, claiming the county’s affordable housing plans were insufficient — as an example of why the fair housing rule was harmful.
“Joe Biden and his radical left bosses want to significantly multiply what they are doing now,” Trump said at the White House in July 2020. “And the end result is that you will totally destroy the beautiful suburbs. Suburbia will no longer be as we know it.”
