Cuts to Housing Nonprofits Will Spur Discrimination, Democrats Say

Representative Maxine Waters of California and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts say they are banding together to fight the Trump administration’s recent cuts that they say will leave Americans unprotected from housing discrimination.

On Monday, the two Democrats delivered a letter to Housing and Urban Development secretary Scott Turner that said cutbacks to fair housing initiatives will “embolden housing discrimination” and put “people’s lives at risk.” The letter has 108 signatures, all from Democrats in Congress.

The action comes on the heels of lawsuits filed last week against HUD and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency by four local fair housing organizations that are hoping to make their case class action. Under the DOGE cost-cutting plan, at least 66 local fair housing groups — whose purpose is to enforce the landmark Fair Housing Act that prohibits discrimination in real estate — face the sudden rescission of $30 million in grants.

Mr. Turner has also forecast that he will slash staff by 50 percent at the agency and by 77 percent at its Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, which enforces the Fair Housing Act at the federal level.

“Soon there’ll be no enforcement,” Ms. Waters said in an interview. “We really are going to go backward.”

Ms. Warren said that if housing discrimination is left unchecked, it will freeze more Americans out of a volatile housing market, adding that seniors, people with disabilities, Blacks and Latinos are most at risk of losing their homes in the volatile market.

“We should attack housing discrimination head-on, in all its forms, but we should also attack the underlying cause, which is the severe housing shortage,” she said in an interview.

When people are desperate for affordable housing, she added, they are at greater risk of being discriminated against because housing providers have the upper hand. “The tight supply of housing is part of the reason that landlords have so much power,” she said.

The Fair Housing Act is otherwise supported by several hundred civil servants and nonprofit employees who field phone calls, offer education and coordinate legal guidance for some 33,000 Americans each year who reach out with claims: A landlord removed the ramp for their wheelchair, and now they can’t access their apartment. Or a home appraisal came back low, and the owners worry it’s because they are Black.

In cases like these, fair housing organizations are the frontline defense to ensuring that Americans’ rights are protected. Without grass-roots groups keeping watch on those who seek to discriminate, the law becomes “a toothless tiger,” said Lisa Rice, president of the National Fair Housing Alliance. Referring to the Trump administration, she said, “They don’t want the law enforced.”

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