{"id":1675,"date":"2018-04-03T07:00:46","date_gmt":"2018-04-03T12:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/?p=1675"},"modified":"2018-04-03T07:00:46","modified_gmt":"2018-04-03T12:00:46","slug":"trump-administration-deregulates-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/?p=1675","title":{"rendered":"Trump Administration Deregulates Housing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard W. Shepherd
\nMarketing & Symposium Editor
\nLoyola University Chicago, J.D. 2019<\/em><\/p>\n

As President Donald Trump continues<\/a> to deliver<\/a> on his promise to deregulate, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has been instrumental in reversing Obama-era regulations.\u00a0 President Trump, who made his fortune in real estate development, has a checkered past<\/a> when it comes to fair housing and discrimination.\u00a0 Now his administration is working to cut funding to HUD and unwind many fair housing and discrimination rules.\u00a0 Administration proponents say this is a necessary step to fix a broken and corrupt bureaucracy, while many advocates have expressed concern over the government scaling back enforcement of fair housing laws.\u00a0 Any reform effort should seek to balance concerns about bureaucracy with the vital missions of fair discrimination-free housing, inclusive communities, and civil rights.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Starting at the Top<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps the most effective way for a President to affect policy changes is through presidential appointments.\u00a0 On March 2, 2017, the Senate approved President Trump\u2019s nominee for the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Dr. Ben Carson<\/a>.\u00a0 Secretary Carson replaced Obama-appointee Juli\u00e1n Castro.\u00a0 Prior to his appointment, Dr. Carson was a pediatric surgeon and Republican politician, with no direct experience related to housing.\u00a0 Secretary Carson stated<\/a> that administering the department \u201cis more complex than brain surgery.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to Dr. Carson, President Trump appointed longtime Trump associate Lynne Patton to oversee the New York and New Jersey HUD offices, one of the most influential posts in the department.\u00a0 Prior to her appointment, Ms. Patton worked as an event planner in the Trump Organization.\u00a0 The appointment was met with immediate backlash<\/a> from New York Democrats, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, who held the office during the Clinton Administration.\u00a0 Prior to her nomination, Ms. Patton had no experience<\/a> related to housing.<\/p>\n

The new HUD administration has moved quickly to implement President Trump\u2019s small-government vision for the department.\u00a0 HUD updated<\/a> its mission statement \u201cin an effort to align HUD\u2019s mission with the Secretary\u2019s priorities and that of the administration.\u201d This was accomplished through removing promises of \u201cinclusiveness\u201d and \u201cdiscrimination-free communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Trump\u2019s 2019 budget also reflects<\/a> the Administration\u2019s new policy towards housing.\u00a0 The budget would slash HUD\u2019s budget by $8.8 billion, or 18 percent.\u00a0 To compensate for the cuts in funding, the Administration will ask HUD-assisted households to \u201cshoulder\u201d more of their housing costs.\u00a0 Secretary Carson said the budget would help \u201cmove people towards self-sufficiency through reforming rental assistance programs and moving aging public housing to more sustainable platforms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suspending HUD Investigations<\/strong><\/p>\n

Secretary Carson has taken several steps<\/a> to reverse Obama-era policies promulgated by his predecessor Juli\u00e1n Castro.\u00a0 In November 2017, the head of the Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Division of HUD ordered an indefinite hold on a half-dozen high priority fair housing investigations.\u00a0 These \u201csecretary-initiated\u201d cases were used to indicate the priorities of the administration, and to set precedent in the housing industry.<\/p>\n

In addition to suspending secretary-initiated cases, Secretary Carson also suspended a high-profile investigation of Facebook.\u00a0 Facebook<\/a> was sued<\/a> by several fair housing groups accusing the social media company of allowing real estate developers to discriminate via advertisements on their platform.\u00a0 A real estate developer could use the personal information Facebook provides them, to target ads to specific users based on their sex, race, family status, or number of children.\u00a0 For example, if a user had \u201cliked\u201d Telemundo, or had posted about learning English as a second language, developers could use that information to exclude those users from their advertisements.\u00a0 Facebook refers to information like this as \u201cethic affinities,\u201d and it has proven an effective method of identifying minority users.\u00a0 Scrutiny<\/a> of Facebook\u2019s advertising practices began in 2016; however, the social media company has done little<\/a> to change their policies.<\/p>\n

Secretary Carson ordered<\/a> Fair Housing Division officials to cancel a planned negotiating session with Facebook.\u00a0 HUD took Facebook at its word that their \u201cpolicies prohibit using our targeting operations to discriminate.\u201d\u00a0 HUD then terminated the preliminary investigation into Facebook.<\/p>\n

Fair Housing Rules<\/strong><\/p>\n

In January 2018, HUD postponed implementation of the Obama-era Rule on Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing<\/a>.\u00a0 The policy, set to take effect in 2020, sought to give Federal enforcement to a civil rights-era rule requiring local governments to take ownership and confront racial inequality in local housing.\u00a0 HUD administrators say the delay is to give local governments more time to prepare for the rule\u2019s implementation; however, fair housing advocates see the move as the Trump Administration abandoning the effort.<\/p>\n

The Rule on Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing fulfills<\/a> a long-standing mandate of the Fair Housing Act of 1968.\u00a0 In addition to prohibiting racial discrimination in housing, the Fair Housing Act required local governments to work to desegregate their communities.\u00a0 The requirement proved difficult to enforce.\u00a0 In 2015, the Supreme Court<\/a> ruled that the Fair Housing Act prohibited housing policies that negatively affected minority groups, absent statutory intent to do so.\u00a0 The Obama Administration used this ruling as legal justification to craft the Rule, which required any community seeking block-grant funding from HUD to complete a comprehensive assessment of fair housing.\u00a0 It remains unclear whether the delay is truly meant to give local governments more time, or whether the action fits within Secretary Carson\u2019s mandate to deregulate housing.<\/p>\n

Looking Forward<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a memo to HUD staff, Secretary Carson dismissed any notion that the department was abandoning its fair housing mission as \u201cnonsense.\u201d\u00a0 However, recent actions indicate the new HUD is at least undergoing a significant recalibration, more in line with the priorities of the new administration.\u00a0 What this means for fair housing and civil rights remains to be seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As President Donald Trump continues to deliver on his promise to deregulate, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has been instrumental in reversing Obama-era regulations.\u00a0 President Trump, who made his fortune in real estate development, has a checkered past when it comes to fair housing and discrimination.\u00a0 Now his administration is working to cut funding to HUD and unwind many fair housing and discrimination rules.\u00a0 Administration proponents say this is a necessary step to fix a broken and corrupt bureaucracy, while many advocates have expressed concern over the government scaling back enforcement of fair housing laws.\u00a0 Any reform effort should seek to balance concerns about bureaucracy with the vital missions of fair discrimination-free housing, inclusive communities, and civil rights.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[267,405,468,606,631,790,1063,1064,1067,1690,2016],"class_list":["post-1675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ben-carson","tag-civil-rights","tag-compliance","tag-deregulation","tag-discrimination","tag-fair-housing","tag-housing","tag-housing-and-urban-development","tag-hud","tag-regulation","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/compliance\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}