Amid Turmoil, HUD Relaxes Fair Housing Enforcement

The department's activities, or lack thereof, under the Trump administration have caused housing advocates a lot of consternation. Under Ben Carson, is HUD abandoning its fair housing mission?

April 3, 2018, 6am PDT | Philip Rojc | @PhilipRojc

Mark Van Scyoc

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Glenn Thrush gives a us rundown of the many ways Ben Carson's HUD has backed off from fair housing enforcement. Things came to a head, he writes, in March, when the secretary moved "to strike the words 'inclusive' and 'free from discrimination' from HUD's mission statement."

Carson has denied a broader shift away from a fair housing agenda. "Mr. Carson dismissed the idea he was abandoning the agency's fair housing mission as 'nonsense' in a memo to the department's staff earlier this year, and reiterated that point during recent congressional hearings."

But examples of more relaxed enforcement, or none at all, continue to accumulate. Thrush discusses several, including HUD's termination of an investigation into potentially discriminatory advertising practices by Facebook, as well as how the agency backed away from its previous stance on a Houston mixed-race housing development that advocates say the city blocked on discriminatory grounds.

"Advocates for the poor and career HUD officials say that Mr. Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, and his political appointees have begun weakening the department's fair housing division at a critical moment."

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Under Ben Carson, HUD Scales Back Fair Housing Enforcement

Published on Wednesday, March 28, 2018 in The New York Times