SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
The Housing and Urban Development Department--tasked with ensuring that fair housing practices are followed--has all but abandoned its mission, critics say, by halting investigations into housing discrimination. (Photo: Culture:Subculture Photography/Flickr/cc)
Putting Fair Housing Investigations on Back-Burner, Trump's HUD Abandons Core Mission
"For all intents and purposes, this administration is stopping the enforcement of civil rights and fair housing laws at the worst possible time."
Mar 29, 2018
The Trump administration's Housing and Urban Development (HUD) appears for the second time this month to be abandoning its core mission of ensuring that all Americans have the right to fair housing, according to reporting by the New York Times.
At least six major investigations into housing discrimination have been frozen since Ben Carson was confirmed as HUD Secretary last year, the Times found.
Earlier this month, civil rights groups condemned Carson for removing anti-discrimination language from the agency's mission statement.
"For all intents and purposes, this administration is stopping the enforcement of civil rights and fair housing laws at the worst possible time," Gustavo Velasquez of the Urban Institute told the Times. "It's not just the lack of an agenda, which is what I thought we were dealing with for the first year or so, but an attempt to reverse all the advances we made through regulations and enforcement actions."
Velasquez served as assistant secretary for fair housing during President Barack Obama's administration, when former Secretary Julian Castro opened multiple investigations into unjust housing practices.
One probe was opened after the California city of Hesperia introduced a "Crime Free Rental Housing Program," which prohibited the creation of group homes for parolees and former offenders in various neighborhoods. The investigation has been delayed since Anna Maria Farias, head of HUD's Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity division, ordered a hold on it in November.
Farias also closed a preliminary investigation into Facebook, which has been accused of allowing housing advertisers from excluding users from seeing their content based on the users' race, ethnicity, and other identifying characteristics.
"Facebook's platform is the virtual equivalent of posting a for-rent sign that says 'No families with young kids' or 'No women'," Fred Freiberg, the executive director of Fair Housing Justice Center, told the Guardian this week as his organization filed a lawsuit against the company this week. "But it does so in an insidious and stealth manner so that people have no clue they have been excluded on the basis of family status or sex."
HUD has also stopped investigating Houston mayor Sylvester Turner's decision to end development of Fountain View, a mixed-income apartment complex in an affluent, mostly-white neighborhood. Critics, including the Obama administration's HUD, have said Turner killed the plan in order to win Republican lawmakers' support for an overhaul of the city's pension system, and to appease white residents who had protested the complex.
"Fountain View was kind of the last stand. We spent eight or nine years documenting systematic and pervasive racial discrimination in Houston--it is an open-and-shut case," John Henneberger, a director of Texas Housers, told the Times.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
The Trump administration's Housing and Urban Development (HUD) appears for the second time this month to be abandoning its core mission of ensuring that all Americans have the right to fair housing, according to reporting by the New York Times.
At least six major investigations into housing discrimination have been frozen since Ben Carson was confirmed as HUD Secretary last year, the Times found.
Earlier this month, civil rights groups condemned Carson for removing anti-discrimination language from the agency's mission statement.
"For all intents and purposes, this administration is stopping the enforcement of civil rights and fair housing laws at the worst possible time," Gustavo Velasquez of the Urban Institute told the Times. "It's not just the lack of an agenda, which is what I thought we were dealing with for the first year or so, but an attempt to reverse all the advances we made through regulations and enforcement actions."
Velasquez served as assistant secretary for fair housing during President Barack Obama's administration, when former Secretary Julian Castro opened multiple investigations into unjust housing practices.
One probe was opened after the California city of Hesperia introduced a "Crime Free Rental Housing Program," which prohibited the creation of group homes for parolees and former offenders in various neighborhoods. The investigation has been delayed since Anna Maria Farias, head of HUD's Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity division, ordered a hold on it in November.
Farias also closed a preliminary investigation into Facebook, which has been accused of allowing housing advertisers from excluding users from seeing their content based on the users' race, ethnicity, and other identifying characteristics.
"Facebook's platform is the virtual equivalent of posting a for-rent sign that says 'No families with young kids' or 'No women'," Fred Freiberg, the executive director of Fair Housing Justice Center, told the Guardian this week as his organization filed a lawsuit against the company this week. "But it does so in an insidious and stealth manner so that people have no clue they have been excluded on the basis of family status or sex."
HUD has also stopped investigating Houston mayor Sylvester Turner's decision to end development of Fountain View, a mixed-income apartment complex in an affluent, mostly-white neighborhood. Critics, including the Obama administration's HUD, have said Turner killed the plan in order to win Republican lawmakers' support for an overhaul of the city's pension system, and to appease white residents who had protested the complex.
"Fountain View was kind of the last stand. We spent eight or nine years documenting systematic and pervasive racial discrimination in Houston--it is an open-and-shut case," John Henneberger, a director of Texas Housers, told the Times.
The Trump administration's Housing and Urban Development (HUD) appears for the second time this month to be abandoning its core mission of ensuring that all Americans have the right to fair housing, according to reporting by the New York Times.
At least six major investigations into housing discrimination have been frozen since Ben Carson was confirmed as HUD Secretary last year, the Times found.
Earlier this month, civil rights groups condemned Carson for removing anti-discrimination language from the agency's mission statement.
"For all intents and purposes, this administration is stopping the enforcement of civil rights and fair housing laws at the worst possible time," Gustavo Velasquez of the Urban Institute told the Times. "It's not just the lack of an agenda, which is what I thought we were dealing with for the first year or so, but an attempt to reverse all the advances we made through regulations and enforcement actions."
Velasquez served as assistant secretary for fair housing during President Barack Obama's administration, when former Secretary Julian Castro opened multiple investigations into unjust housing practices.
One probe was opened after the California city of Hesperia introduced a "Crime Free Rental Housing Program," which prohibited the creation of group homes for parolees and former offenders in various neighborhoods. The investigation has been delayed since Anna Maria Farias, head of HUD's Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity division, ordered a hold on it in November.
Farias also closed a preliminary investigation into Facebook, which has been accused of allowing housing advertisers from excluding users from seeing their content based on the users' race, ethnicity, and other identifying characteristics.
"Facebook's platform is the virtual equivalent of posting a for-rent sign that says 'No families with young kids' or 'No women'," Fred Freiberg, the executive director of Fair Housing Justice Center, told the Guardian this week as his organization filed a lawsuit against the company this week. "But it does so in an insidious and stealth manner so that people have no clue they have been excluded on the basis of family status or sex."
HUD has also stopped investigating Houston mayor Sylvester Turner's decision to end development of Fountain View, a mixed-income apartment complex in an affluent, mostly-white neighborhood. Critics, including the Obama administration's HUD, have said Turner killed the plan in order to win Republican lawmakers' support for an overhaul of the city's pension system, and to appease white residents who had protested the complex.
"Fountain View was kind of the last stand. We spent eight or nine years documenting systematic and pervasive racial discrimination in Houston--it is an open-and-shut case," John Henneberger, a director of Texas Housers, told the Times.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.