Trump, Ben Carson Are ‘Tearing Down’ an Obama-Era Housing Rule

The Trump administration will end the Obama administration’s 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule Thursday morning, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and senior HUD officials explained Wednesday to the Daily Caller.

“At the request of the President, HUD will be tearing down the Obama Administration’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule,” Carson told the Daily Caller. “In nearly every case, it is a fact that local governments are more adequately equipped to deal with their community’s unique needs than any unelected bureaucrat in Washington.”

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The AFFH rule was added to the decades-old Fair Housing Act by the Obama administration in an effort to hold local HUD grantees accountable to the idea of furthering affordable housing by producing and maintaining assessments of fair housing practices. {snip}

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Carson and senior HUD officials stated that the decision to roll back AFFH dated back to President Donald Trump’s first days in office. Carson originally suspended AFFH tools in 2018, and Trump further instructed Carson in January of 2020 to go as far as the law allows to terminate and replace the rule, without requiring Congressional action, senior HUD officials said. {snip}

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HUD officials maintained that the rule change does not mean the administration is “abandoning” the principles outlined in the Fair Housing Act. Instead, they said that Trump and Carson are seeking to streamline the process in which local jurisdictions can quickly provide safe and affordable housing to people who need it most.

Since being tapped to lead HUD, Carson has taken significant steps to ensure fair housing aid be made available to those who truly need it. He and HUD accused and sued Facebook of violating the Fair Housing Act in 2019 by restricting housing-based ads by race and other factors. {snip}

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Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar and Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee offered similar praise to the Daily Caller of Carson and the Trump administration on the issue.

“Secretary Carson and President Trump have rightfully recognized the importance of rolling back Obama’s AFFH rule, which sought to extort localities for utopian demographic design. For years I have fought this effort by Democrats to socially engineer local neighborhoods for political power,” Gosar stated. “I fully support this Trump Administration rule that empowers local communities.”

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