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 the Housing Choice Voucher program, a program designed to give low-income families greater access to housing in higher-cost and higher-opportunity neighborhoods. Instead of basing voucher payment standards on average rents across an entire metropolitan area, Small Area Fair Market Rents (SAFMRs) reflect rents in individual ZIP Codes, allowing voucher payment standards to be higher in more expensive neighborhoods and lower in less expensive ones.

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The first Trump administration attempted to delay mandatory implementation of the rule for two years. After housing and civil-rights organizations sued, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia blocked the delay, and SAFMRs became mandatory in 24 metropolitan areas in 2018.

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The program has since expanded substantially. In 2023, HUD designated another 41 metropolitan areas for mandatory participation, bringing the total to 65. Those new designations took effect on October 1, 2024. Other public housing agencies may also voluntarily adopt SAFMRs, and the ZIP Code-based system remains in effect in 2026.

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The next swipe at the Fair Housing Act came in January 2018, when the first Trump administration suspended implementation of the AFFH, the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule. Several months later, HUD withdrew the assessment tool that local governments had been required to use in complying with the 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?