USBC Applauds White House Proposals Targeting Housing Discrimination and Rental Insecurity, But They Need to Be Strengthened

This past month, the Biden administration released much-anticipated proposals that seek to address two significant long-standing housing injustices: insufficient protections against discrimination for people of color and other vulnerable populations, and the growing power imbalance between landlords and tenants that has created mass instability for renters, including increased evictions and homelessness, which disproportionately impacts women of color and their children.

The legacy of housing discrimination in America, such as redlining and appraisal bias, has resulted in deeply entrenched patterns of segregation and race-based equity disparity that have defied multiple efforts to end these heinous practices, largely because the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has been either unwilling or unable to hold cities accountable for their failures. The Biden Administration's new proposal seeks to remedy this problem. Known as the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, the new proposal is a restoration of an Obama-era rule (killed by the Trump administration) that requires communities to craft desegregation plans that would then be submitted to HUD for approval. Communities would be required to file progress reports to HUD, and individuals would be able to file federal complaints if they feel their elected officials were failing to meet the approved plans' stated goals. While specific penalties are not outlined in the proposal, AFFH does express general commitments by HUD to hold communities and officials accountable.

The pandemic temporarily halted ideological and political resistance to addressing housing insecurity through government intervention, as it became a public health imperative to quarantine as many as possible as quickly as possible. However, as the emergency actions waned in conjunction with the diminishing public health crisis, and housing costs soared to record heights along with a spike in overall inflation, renters once again struggled to keep up with these unchecked costs leading to a mass wave of housing instability, including a steep rise in evictions and homelessness, as the housing market consolidated into more and more corporate control and landlords raked in record profits. The stark contrast between the relative stability achieved through government intervention, and the immediate chaos resulting from the termination of those interventions, led to renewed and fervent calls by tenants and fair housing advocates for the government to institute permanent, substantive, tenant protections. The Biden administration has responded with a proposal for new actions intended to protect tenants and make rent more affordable, as well as a "Blueprint for Renters' Bill of Rights" which articulates key protections every tenant deserves. The outlined actions include directives for multiple agencies to examine various practices that impact the rental market including background checks, credit reports, and excessive rent increases.

USBC applauds the Biden Administration for engaging the community in serious and sincere dialog to address housing discrimination and rental instability, and these proposals represent an important step towards meaningful progress. Prior to 2015, no framework existed for how communities should enact and enforce fair housing policies, so the reinstatement of strengthened AFFH rule represents a critical advancement towards dismantling deep structural racism in U.S. housing policy. Likewise, the Biden administration's actions on behalf of beleaguered renters represents an acknowledgement on the highest level that the widening power inequity between landlords and tenants has left millions, including families and children, vulnerable to profound housing instability, and suggests meaningful steps may be taken to rectify this crisis.

However we echo the concerns of other fair housing advocates that neither proposals will put an immediate halt to the egregious housing practices they are intended to address, and neither have enough policy teeth, yet, to genuinely deter future inequities and injustices. While HUD does express a commitment to accountability with regard to discrimination practices, it hasn't put forward any specific actions they plan to enact to penalizes offenders. And the administration's expressed commitment to assist renters, while important, is little more than a nonbinding outline of values and promises at this point. We are glad that the administration is seeking feedback from the community to improve and strengthen these proposals, and we are hopeful that future revisions will include more substantive remedies.

PUBLIC COMMENTS

HUD is encouraging public comments on the proposed Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, click here for more information:

Public comments on AFFH rule