Outrage Over Trump's Fair Housing Victory Lap

President Trump took to Twitter today to celebrate his administration's decision to rescind the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, approved by the Obama administration to strengthen the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

5 minute read

July 29, 2020, 12:00 PM PDT

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Ben Carson

Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock

Planetizen has been following the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule since its development and adoption as one of the signature civil rights accomplishments of the Obama administration. Planetizen also followed the AFFH as the Trump administration started the slow process of dismantling the rule, and again recently as President Trump leveraged the rule in the hopes of making up ground he's steadily losing with voters in the suburbs.

But this week, with the AFFH finally in ashes, the narrative has taken a bizarre turn, with a Twitter blast from the president that provoked immediate outrage on social media, and is likely to be a lowlight of planning and housing policy history for decades to come. In the Tweet, the president seems ecstatic at his administration's accomplishments in maintaining a status quo that has proven, again and again and again and again, to cause segregation that harms low-income and marginalized communities.

I took a quick tour of Planning Twitter to gather reactions, some of which are emotional responses, and some are substantive responses. None of the reactions you'll see here support the tone or the substance of the president's tweet. If you're looking for support for the decision, I'm sure Stanley Kurtz is working on something for the National Review as we speak, if he didn't have an article in the canister already.

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James Brasuell

James Brasuell is a writer and editor, producing web, print, and video content on the subjects of planning, urbanism, and mobility. James has managed all editorial content and direction for Planetizen since 2014 and was promoted to editorial director in 2021. After a first career as a class five white water river guide in Trinity County in Northern California, James started his career in Los Angeles as a volunteer at a risk reduction center in Skid Row.

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