HUD Plans to Stop Linking Affordable Housing Funds to Search for Segregation
HUD Secretary Ben Carson says federal funds for affordable housing should not be tied to community efforts to target and eliminate segregated neighborhoods. The Obama Administration had required that. Carson says it is “suffocating” investment in poor areas.
The Trump Administration says it plans to change regulations that tie federal funding for affordable housing to municipalities’ efforts to combat segregation.
Under the Obama Administration the government required towns and cities to examine areas that were traditionally segregated and devise methods for ending that discrimination.
Otherwise the municipalities would lose funding from the Housing and Urban Development Department.
But the Trump Administration’s HUD secretary, Detroit native Ben Carson, says the requirement is “suffocating” investment in neighborhoods that need it the most.
Carson says eliminating the regulation will encourage developers to build affordable housing in a wider range of areas.
Critics counter that ending the mandate means communities can purposely avoid searching for patterns of segregation.
The change could impact Detroit, where officials have publicly pushed for more affordable housing as new investment pushes the price of living in the city ever higher.
HUD officials say they will take comments on the plan for two months.
