President Donald Trump said Tuesday evening he will be reexamining an Obama-era housing rule critics have long said removed local control over zoning and imposed arbitrary federal racial quotas.
At the request of many great Americans who live in the Suburbs, and others, I am studying the AFFH housing regulation that is having a devastating impact on these once thriving Suburban areas. Corrupt Joe Biden wants to make them MUCH WORSE. Not fair to homeowners, I may END!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 1, 2020
In June 2016, just months before the November election, the Obama administration — perhaps confident that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would win — imposed a new rule loosely based on the 1968 Fair Housing Act.
The rule, called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH), required “any locality that receives block grant funding from the agency to rezone neighborhoods based on income and racial prerequisites,” BizPac Review reported.
The mandate essentially allowed the federal government to dictate state and local zoning laws while forcing subsidized housing into middle- and upper-middle-class suburbs.
In addition, the rule could be used to punish localities by withholding federal housing assistance if they fail to achieve racial quotas.
“We recognize that a growing body of research supports the benefits of socioeconomic and racial diversity in schools and communities, and that such diversity can help establish access points for opportunity and mobility,” the then-heads of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Education said in a letter informing state and local officials.
“We also recognize that children raised in concentrated poverty or in communities segregated by socioeconomic status or race or ethnicity have significantly lower social and economic mobility than those growing up in integrated communities,” the letter continued.
“Rising economic segregation means that an increasing number of low-income households are located in distressed neighborhoods where they face challenges such as failing schools, high rates of crime, and inadequate access to services and jobs, making it harder for individuals and families to escape poverty.”
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