Trump Administration Postpones an Obama Fair-Housing Rule

This plays out in ways that are not always as intended. All across Long Island, there are towns that were initially welcoming to people here illegally--eg, set up centers for day workers so they wouldn't have to stand outside. Over a decade or more, that population has increased--maybe to 20% of the town's population. People who have houses they can't sell rent them out to groups of families. But those families often have a lot of kids, so that they make up a large portion--often 60% or more--of the kids in the local public schools. Property taxes are high, with a lot of money going to help these kids, with, for example, English language learners. The test results for the local schools are poor. There isn't a lot of money for extras like art of music. Young families look elsewhere when looking to buy a house. Property values go down. Which means more renters, etc. That scenario has played out in town after town. People aren't crazy to be wary of this kind of thing. T

I'm glad to see this changed. At the end of the day, I did not spend waaaaay to much for my house and neighborhood to have the federal government try to forcefully import poverty and crime. Happy to help build better schools and help improve "low-income" neighborhoods, but you cannot ignore the realities of many of these places, and the negative social externalities. My neighborhood had no recorded crime in 2016. Let's keep it that way. I read the following and laughed, because it's pretty normal for high-income progressive areas. Happy to let others deal with the pain of their dreams and ideology, but no desire to actually experience it themselves. But of course everyone else is "racist". http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-marin-county-affordable-housin...

Trump is reprehensible for doing this, his father was up on charges for discrimination of ethnicity in his appartments.. why are you guys so against helping poorer communities? You have to pay for the society you wish to live in and the benefit of helping these communities is fantastic for your economy, then they’re giving back to America. They can’t do that if you’re holding them down!

And, at last, a Trump Administration action worth celebrating. Why? Get out of New York City, the great anomaly. Drive around your country. With virtually no exceptions, wherever you find "affordable housing"—that bit of Newspeak; it's subsidized housing—you'll find neighborhood that now has higher crime, overcrowded schools, and dramatically depressed property values. Why do you think there is such a thing as white flight? Do people really think that placing low-income people in nicer neighborhoods results in high social capital and bourgeois values rubbing off on the new residents? We have nearly a century of real world experience that proves it does not happen. In a phrase, the neighborhood goes downhill. Millions of dollars in equity in wealth evaporates from, tragically, most families' greatest investment. There are no magic zip codes. People make a nice neighborhood. After all, "What is the city but the people?"

Unless such is caused by illegal discrimination what exactly would anybody do about it. I am reminded that correlation does not indicate causality. I also wonder how you would do this without infringing on privacy.

Trump never believed in equal opportunity in housing. He and his father ended up paying a massive fine because they discriminated against black applicants for their rentals. If someone can afford to buy or rent in an area or building they should be allowed to do it. Social engineering moving unqualified applicants into a building or area does disservice to all. We live in a planned adult community and there are a number of black families who may have more income than many of the white residents. No problems here. Economics should be the only factor.

Oh, Happy Day!

What about a fair employment rule? And rule to prevent jobs and industry from leaving impoverished families? Where was the Obama-era initiative to prevent those losses and disruption to markets, families, communities and our nation? Why were those rules never even thought about least of all postponed? Don't blame segregation on housing rules. It makes no sense. The issues are jobs, jobs, jobs and jobs.

There has been actual research done showing that moving poor people into middle class neighborhoods had little effect for girls and a negative impact on boys. They aren't sure why the gender disparity but I think that the idea that a neighborhood or zip code can solve poverty or injustice has been disproven. We should be doing more to give people the emotional stability and support they need first, marriage counseling, financial advisors, child therapy/behavior classes, etc because that's the foundation for success, then worry about redesigning neighborhoods.

I've seen first hand what happens to communities that merely stop paying attention to zoning, code enforcement, and demographics. It usually starts with letting multi-family units proliferate. The logic is that these bring more tax revenue in, but it's a short term fix with negative return on the investment. Because as soon as these go in, you wind up with higher crime, bad schools, citizens who require massive levels of support, and then depressed property values for those who don't. The counties that do this wind up with a net lower tax base than they had in the beginning, which leads them to the Federal through for the make-up funds, and ultimately towards Section 8 and other poverty magnet handouts that bring the community down even more. For smaller communities trapped within these county death spirals, the only recourse is to pay up, add a layer of government, and become a city. For the super-rich, there are other options, like moving into the kind of lily white super exclusive communities preferred by the Clintons and Obamas of the world. If enacted to its fullest, this policy would have only accelerated the trend outlined above. Trump's direct experience as a property developer, and Carson's direct experiences growing up black and poor (giving him insight into what really causes segregation and dysfunction - character issues, not a lack of access to housing) is paying a big dividend! All the more reason to re-elect Trump! Safety, prosperity, and MAGA!

Why is it so difficult if not impossible for progressives to admit that segregation is not the only problem, or cause of differences between economic disparity between the races? HUD is primarily a large bureaucracy isolated in Washington DC without any real connection to the states save for data received from them. That is not critical analysis of the issues of racial segregation or disparities in wealth, income and education between the races. Frankly this is sham. How does a DC agency come off to demand that a "local community have an obligation to further fair housing and pledge that they are doing it?" It doesn't even begin to make sense that local communities can have such and outsized response. Segregation has many, many causes. In my view it begins with jobs and education. For the last 30 years we have dismantled our industries, jobs and infrastructure. That destroys tax bases and guts local communities who can no longer support schools or provide other services for safety and infrastructure maintenance. Residential segregation is not the heart of racial inequality. The heart is jobs and education. When Democrats insist that globalization is beneficial to America because we can import low priced goods and services they need to look more deeply to see the real effects. No one can afford a home, or move up, or get a decent education without a job and access to advancement and a real career. Bring the jobs back and rebuild American communities. End segregation.

The obviously socialist idea of having federal bureaucrats designing neighborhoods and, eventually, telling individuals where they may and may NOT buy or build homes was the quietest idea Barack Obama tried to force us into. (Not counting the CFPB which was set up to illegally funnel federal money into strictly political groups never approved by the Congress.) Collectivism demands that no one gets to pick his neighbors. Marx would probably hit you on the nose were you to insist otherwise. But Mr. Obama knew that the American people would NEVER approve such a drastic change, so he worked it into effect everywhere he could without telling Congress. Well, he got caught, and this will never happen. Today's score: America 1, Obama 0.

I take issue with the statements that “Residential segregation is at the heart of racial inequality in the country,” and “All of the disparities in the U.S. — in education, in income, wealth, employment, health — between the races are all fundamentally linked to residential segregation." That does not ring true. Why must de-segregation always be the excuse for racial disparity between blacks and whites in income, education, wealth and health? What about other differences within geographic areas? What about the jobs that were exported by Democratic trade polices for the last 30 years? How many millions of blacks and whites are disadvantaged because of the loss of income, jobs, housing, education, health care and everything else associated with those losses? The job losses were across the board losses that affected entire communities throughout the nation. We lost textile mills, apparel factories, brass manufacturing, toys, watches, TVs, radio, steel, aluminum, drugs, furniture, autos, electronics, computers, servers, chip manufacturing, paper products, and everything else under the sun. Tool and die makers are almost non-existent in America and its not because of automation and robots. Fair and better housing and access to all that fair housing brings cannot happen without jobs and income. Segregation is an excuse to not look at all the other causes of inequality. The Democrats wanted free trade and globalization. Hillary told us the jobs lost are not coming back.

This article is written as biased as the content of the 2015 AFFH rule is biased. There's no balance or mention of the arguments against the new socialist rule that imposed the federal government (HUD) to become judge and jury over local government planning using grants as a bribe. Protecting property rights is the first obligation of local governments and HUD's 2015 AFFH rule is a direct attack against property rights and local governments. Use the www.affh.net website as a resource to find complete and thorough information on this terrible rule and the reasons to trash it forever. With no regrets, in 2016 Douglas County Colorado voted to stop taking the AFFH grant/bribe because of the oppressive rule.

Affordable Housing is critical. both in cities and in areas with high cost of living. For 10 years I worked in the affordable housing business in NYS, and there are so many things that impact this whole subject that you are seeing the tip of the iceberg in this article. We strived to provide affordable, decent, and respectable homes in safe neighborhoods for families, with the intent to help people be able to work their way out of generational poverty. There are no simple answers! We would work on building a neighborhood, as that is the best way to improve the living conditions in an area. Some of these neighborhoods had been prime in their day, with beautiful big old houses that had been let go to ruin as the economics of the city changed and as city families died off or moved to suburbs. Consider that a neighborhood needs a good school, public transportation, safe walkability, a grocery store, and responsible people. My feeling has been that we are helping those that are willing to help themselves, but that also concentrates the "problems" of drugs, violence, etc. into the severe low income neighborhoods-where the rental standards are lower, crime is rampant, and answers to the problems are few. Also, I can say I have completed MANY hud documents, (and had a reputation for doing the paperwork right), and I can understand why this was an onerous project. Even with step by step guidelines, there is much more to the picture than spots filled in on a form.

There is nothing natural about today's racial and economic housing segregation. Government created today's housing segregation as thoroughly documented in Richard Rothstein's acclaimed tome "The Color of Law: The Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America." This forced segregation is not going away on its own. The governments that created it need to act to end it. We've produced some of the most highly regarded Analyses of Impediments and have consistently found that the actual proportion of African Americans in a jurisdiction and its census tracts is significantly lower than would be expected in a genuinely free housing market where household income and the cost of housing determined who lives there. Black households that can afford to live in these suburbs are still facing discrimination. These suburbs also keep out households of modest incomes through exclusionary zoning. Following the AFFH rule would only open the doors, not lead to a massive influx of modest income households. As long as we keep them segregated away from higher opportunity areas, their upward mobility and opportunity fully participate in the American Dream will be artificially blocked. Of course Trump was elected to preserve segregation. So it's no surprise that Ben Carson is seeking to effectively abolish the AFFH rule.

Welcome to the wisdom of the 44th. "Elections have consequences." This one also illustrates the fungibility of Executive orders or fiats - and many issued by the 44th - which the Congress did not back. It has been said that America is served best by public policies that are backed by the Executive and the Congress - and found legal muster by the courts. Break that chain - and this is the result. One comment about this story. It never quotes anyone who opposed this rule - reasons for their opposition and how difficult it was to put into use. In that regard, this story contributes to POTUS claims of fake news. And that's a shame.

Enough reason to vote for Trump again. If Dems think moving people who into nice areas on the government’s dime is a good thing, they’ll never get my vote again. I’ve seen first hand how Section 8 people destroy neighborhoods, I want no part of it.

I am all for eliminating racial discrimination in housing. However, I can also understand why homeowners of any race, color or religion would object to federal agencies placing low-income housing in prosperous neighborhoods, which would inevitably depress property values and lead to the prosperous people moving to other neighborhoods. The answer to poverty is not to forcibly integrating neighborhoods, but to improve education, training and job opportunities for everyone.

It is crystal clear that Trump is the perfect figurehead leader for the GOP faithful. He is without a personal ideology and incapable of thinking through any issues brought before him. McConnell and Ryan in Congress know that he will sign anything placed on his desk. The Cabinet members are a collection of right-wing sycophants, conspiracy theorists and just plain incompetents. They know that they can promulgate anything which will play to his perverse base. In just a few days we have seen examples of this in Housing,, AIDS, ANWAR and Offshore Drilling, Marijuana law enforcement, DACA and the Wall, Nuclear Buttons and on and on... This may not be political Hell but I think I can see it from here.

trump would bring back slavery if he could. Shame. Shame!

His spite and hatred of Obama is pathetic, and pathological. Thanks, GOP.

Trump Administration Revokes Obama Presidency; Says It 'Never Happened.'

Only this administration can interpret the Fair Housing Act as unfair. After all, i'm sure there are good people "on both sides" and legalizing apartheid has always been on their wish list. I thought it was a stretch to say they will "reinterpret" voting rights that were hard fought as well, but clearly nothing is off the table.

After the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, Congress passed the Fair Housing Act which included an obligation on the federal government to affirmatively further fair housing. Until the 2015 HD regulations, HUD and the rest of the federal government paid virtually no attention to the affirmatively further fair housing requirement. So nearly 50 years since Dr. King's death and passage of the FHA, Trump and Carson say we have not had enough time to study the problem and see what should be done. The Kerner Commission also told us in 1968 that we had become two societies, separate and unequal. Though there have been great strides, still the Kerner conclusion remains true due in part to the failure of the federal government to enforce the FHA. Now Trump says we need more time.

Every day sees an attack of cruelty, intolerance, greed, shortsightedness. Today we suffer two wounds to American civilization: this and the allowing of offshore drilling. sure hope that people heed that Woolf book

This is great news and I hope the rule is eventually abolished. If you can't afford to live on, say, Jupiter Island, Florida then you have no right to demand that the Island build lower cost housing to accommodate you. Discrimination in the sale or rent of housing should never be tolerated but it's a very different thing to say that there is some affirmative duty for every community to directly reflect the nation's racial and ethnic diversity even if that means forcing low income housing into Chappaqua. That is governmental overreach of epic proportions.

Every day is a new low for this GOP administration.

Good. This rule is just another pointless federal expense designed to keep bureaucrats employed. Leave local decisions to the localities.

The rule is unworkable. NYC is one of the most segregated cities in the country, and this rule would not have changed that.

This is great news. It's one thing to outlaw discrimination and I have no problem with the government sending testers out to make sure that no one is refusing to sell houses in rich neighborhoods to rich black people. But this rule would have ended zoning as a means to protect the market value of housing. What happens to the value of nice homes on 1-acre lots when the federal gov't forces the suburb to build a cheap housing development right next door? This had nothing to do with racial discrimination. It was just more leveling and redistribution from the party of leveling and redistribution and thank heavens the country put paid to that in the last election.

Cities remain completely free to affirmatively address disparities in housing based on race. And, they can save thousands and thousands of dollars by not having to file reams of paper solely to comply with bureaucratic regulations.

DT is focussed on dismantling everything that has come before. I did not agree with previous administrations frequently, but let us take care of our planet and our people, animals and fish who live in the oceans.

I guess it's too much to expect Dr. Carson to support the abolishment of racially segregated communities when he has to accept the notion that he's the lone member of his race to qualify for a seat in Trump's cabinet room.

These people are lying through their teeth. They say that the delay is to respond to cities who are struggling to do the filing. But, at the same time, "the department says it will stop reviewing plans that have already been filed." if the plans have already been filed, there is no need to give the relief or time to finish the work. Once again, they are shafting poor people and covering their disregard of their needs with a blatant lie. .

Both trump and his father have long term experience, as well as plenty of losing lawsuits, in racial discrimination in housing. And of course trump himself is very experienced in bankruptcy, from here its forward on to putting Social Security and Medicare into bankruptcy.