Lessons in Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing

The Biden administration revamped the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule back in January of this year, with the hope of improving upon the model first adopted by the Obama administration in 2015 and eventually scrapped by the Trump administration in 2020. The rule is intended to strengthen the anti-discrimination efforts of the 1968 Fair Housing Act (FHA).

With that goal in mind, Natalie Spievack and Ben Metcalf write an article for the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley that digs into the efforts of California to accomplish many of the same outcomes.

“Despite the break in federal action on AFFH, California has been working to pursue AFFH goals since the 2015 rule was put into place, with a particular focus on creating racially and economically integrated communities,” according to the article. The state’s AFFH efforts have produced clear lessons about what it takes to incentivize affordable housing in “high-opportunity neighborhoods,” how to rezone for fair housing in the housing element processes required by state law, and codifying AFFH at the state level.

More analysis on California’s implementation of AFFH was published and shared by Planetizen in June 2022.

The source article, linked below, also notes that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is seeking comments about the newly revised AFFH rule until April 10.