COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORNER - Is HUD Still in the Fair Housing Business?
Written by SP Editor
On April 11, 1968 President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the federal Fair Housing Act (FHA). Enacted just seven days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., this law established fair housing as the policy of the U.S. with a clear national mandate to eliminate housing discrimination and foster inclusive, well-resourced communities. The FHA as amended prohibits housing discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, and family status. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was given primary responsibility for enforcing this federal mandate. But in light of recent proposed staffing and policy changes it is unclear if HUD is a tool for enforcing fair housing or a vehicle for undermining the rights and attacking the people it was designed to protect.
Proposed staff cuts and policy changes at HUD and in the Trump Administration generally threaten to eviscerate what had been a more than 60-year effort to identify and remove barriers to housing opportunity for those who had long been denied equal access to housing and related neighborhood amenities. The future is, at best, uncertain.
In her September 22, 2025, New York Times article “Trump Appointees Roll Back Enforcement of Fair Housing Laws,” Debra Kamin documented how this process is playing out. She reported on dramatic proposed cuts in staffing levels, reductions in enforcement cases, and intimidation of HUD staffers who protested. She noted a proposed 65 percent cut in staffing levels in HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. In some cases, HUD lawyers were prohibited from communicating with clients without approval from a Trump appointee and were barred from citing previous fair housing cases deemed “contrary to administration policy.”
Kamin reported that in each of the previous five years HUD collected between $4 million and $8 million in legal settlements from those accused of housing discrimination but in Trump’s first seven months the agency approved less than $200,000 in settlements. Charges of discrimination dropped from an average of 35 per year to four.
Hundreds of pending fair housing cases were frozen and some settlements were revoked. For example, in one case a large homeowners association in Texas was found to have banned the use of housing vouchers by Black residents. That case had been referred to the Department of Justice for investigation but the Trump Administration withdrew that referral. Kamin also reported on HUD lawyers who were reassigned or fired after expressing reservations about new policy initiatives.
Several traditional victims of housing discrimination are losing out. They include single mothers with children denied rental housing by landlords, disabled veterans with service animals denied housing, Black buyers not shown homes in white neighborhoods by real estate agents, and victims of domestic violence denied housing assistance when attempting to escape their abuser.
The Trump Administration has also dismantled important policy tools that had long served as critical for fair housing enforcement. Perhaps the most significant was the April 2025 executive order and subsequent February 2026 proposed regulation to end the use of disparate impact analysis in fair housing enforcement activity. Under the law, as confirmed by the Supreme Court in its 2015 case , Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, a policy or practice that adversely affects a protected class member can violate the law even if there is no proven intent to discriminate. Such a policy or practice would not constitute a violation of law if the defendant can demonstrate that it is essential for the conduct of his or her business. But even under these conditions if a plaintiff can establish that a less discriminatory policy or practice that also meets that business objective is available and the defendant refuses to implement that option, a violation would exist, again even if no discriminatory intent is proven. As Thomas Silverstein, executive director of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, observed, “It’s critical we have disparate impact to fight against race discrimination.”
But HUD is not the only federal agency that is no longer meeting its fair housing obligations. In December the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a new regulation banning the use of disparate impact in its cases, and it did so by taking the unusual step of not providing for a notice and comment period that the Administrative Procedure Act requires before new regulations can be finalized. Regulations, of course, have more force of law than executive orders and are harder to overturn by future administrations.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has taken similar steps. In the December 2025 Fair Lending Report of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for 2024 the CFPB stated,
“In furtherance of the objectives set out by Executive Order 14281, the CFPB will no longer use disparate impact in its supervision or enforcement of fair lending laws. To that end, the Bureau has closed all elements of open exams and investigations that relied on disparate impact liability. The Bureau also terminated CFPB orders that relied on disparate impact liability. Going forward, the CFPB is focusing its fair lending supervisory and enforcement resources on matters with direct evidence of intentional racial discrimination and identified victims.”
And the Trump administration is looking backward as well as forward. As Julian Mark and Laura Meckler reported in their June 1, 2025, Washington Post article “Discrimination cases unravel as Trump scraps core civil rights tenet,” previous cases that relied on disparate impact analysis are being overturned. For example, on May 23, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) terminated an agreement with the Tennessee-based lender Patriot Bank which was based on statistical evidence indicating it made few loans in black neighborhoods as well as evidence of discriminatory intent including the targeting of its advertising to white neighborhoods. Several other previous settlements may be on the chopping block.
Further evidence of the federal government’s retreat was provided in November 2025, when HUD announced that it is withdrawing nine guidance documents that had previously been utilized to interpret and strengthen fair housing laws and regulations. The areas covered included national origin discrimination protecting limited English-speaking residents, service animal assistance for those with disabilities, discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, special purpose credit programs that target financing to traditionally underserved communities, use of criminal background records, source of income testing, and advertising of housing credit and other real estate related transactions through digital platforms. The justification provided by current HUD officials for removing these protections was to reduce compliance burdens for housing providers.
Fair housing advocacy remains vital, but is carried out almost exclusively at the local and state levels. In its “2025 Fair Housing Trends Report” the National Fair Housing Alliance noted that in 2024, 32,321 fair housing complaints were filed with non-profit fair housing organizations and government agencies. But 74.12 percent of those were filed with private, non-profit fair housing organizations. State agencies received 20.9 percent, 4.85 percent were filed with HUD, and DOJ received 0.14 percent. Many of those local agencies are dependent on HUD funds and several have faced proposed budget cuts that could force them to close or cut back on their services. In February, following a strong advocacy push on the part of advocates, Congress voted to restore critical funds for local and state agencies and HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. Again, the future is uncertain.
HUDs actions are consistent with the broader attack on DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) that has been a broad target of the Trump Administration. But the goal is not to pursue such criteria as merit, qualifications, or other related values as is often trumpeted. It is simply to reward friends and punish perceived opponents. As Charles Osadebe, a HUD lawyer and organizer with the Federal Unionists Network that is pushing back against the Trump changes, stated “This is a deliberate plan, and it’s about shutting down fair housing.” So, it is unclear if HUD is still in the fair housing business. But many are fighting back. As Osadabe concluded, “We took an oath to defend the constitution. These are the moments we took that oath for.”
Gregory D. Squires is a Research Professor and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at George Washington University
