National Review
The Democratic Party’s obsession with race — and the view that African Americans have made little or no social or economic progress since the 1960s — is about to reach into any local government that receives any federal assistance. That means some 1,250 jurisdictions that receive community-development funds, along with the nation’s more than 3,000 public-housing authorities. The means of intrusion will be the Biden Department of Housing and Urban Development’s decision to reinstitute the program known as Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH), started in the Obama years but withdrawn by the Trump administration.
Its goal: to require all recipients of HUD funds to develop elaborate “equity plans” aimed at a version of “fair housing,” not about nondiscrimination but focused on moving low-income households to higher-income places. It’s based on the dubious idea that the move to places with “more resources” will inevitably lead to upward mobility.
The breadth of the “equity plans” with which HUD will burden local officials is breathtaking, touching on almost any aspect of local government.
The proposed regulations — released Thursday and now subject to a 60-day comment period — call for communities to “adopt different types of strategies that will meaningfully increase fair housing choice in their communities, including by choosing from an array of place-based strategies (e.g., the preservation of existing affordable housing or increased investments in community assets) and mobility strategies (e.g., improved housing counseling, assessing how school assignments are made, or building affordable housing in well-resourced areas).” In other words, HUD is going to assess almost everything that local governments do in the name of “fair housing.”
