Discrimination in every segment of the housing market continues to be a major problem. In 2024, there were 32,321 fair housing complaints received by nonprofit fair housing organizations, state and local Fair Housing Assistance Program agencies, HUD, and the U.S. Department of Justice.

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This has been going on forever. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 – one of the most significant legislative achievements of the Civil Rights era – first prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing. This means that landlords, real estate companies, insurance companies, cities, and banks and other lending institutions cannot make housing unavailable to individuals because of race, religion, sex, or national origin.

 

In 1988, Congress passed the Fair Housing Amendments Act, which expanded the law to prohibit housing discrimination based on disability or family status, such as single mothers or families with children. This legislation brought the enforcement of the Fair Housing Act even more definitively under the watch of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

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The first Trump administration tried to undermine the Fair Housing Act on multiple fronts to “save the suburbs.” It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what that means…

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Their first attempt was to suspend the Small Area Fair Market Rent rule for public housing agencies, a rule that gives low-income families the ability to pursue housing in safer suburban neighborhoods. Small Area Fair Market Rents (SAFMRs) reflect rents in specific ZIP Codes as opposed to averages across entire metropolitan regions and then increase the amount of a voucher for high-rent ZIP Codes.​ After being sued multiple times, the first Trump administration’s effort was blocked by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and the rule was implemented in 24 metropolitan areas in 2018. In 2023, the rule was implemented in an additional 41 metro areas.

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The next swipe at the Fair Housing Act came in January 2018, when the Trump administration suspended implementation of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule.

 

​In 2015, HUD adopted the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule, a rule that required entities that receive federal grants and housing aid to submit plans detailing how they will end housing discrimination and segregation. Although the Fair Housing Act always required this type of accountability, proper legislation had never been passed to ensure compliance.

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HUD clarified at the time that “affirmatively furthering fair housing means taking meaningful actions that, taken together, address significant disparities in housing needs and in access to opportunity, replacing segregated living patterns with truly integrated and balanced living patterns, transforming racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty into areas of opportunity, and fostering and maintaining compliance with civil rights and fair housing laws.”

 

Now, the Trump/Vance administration has replaced the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule with a weaker, less stringent process that only requires HUD grantees to self-certify their commitment to fair housing. What could possibly go wrong?