Rep. Maxine Waters has sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging the immediate release and implementation of the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development’s final Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, a commitment to fair housing for all, and a measure to expand affordable housing and curb the nation’ homelessness crisis.
“This month, we commemorate National Fair Housing Month and 56 years since the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which included the affirmatively furthering fair housing (AFFH) provision that requires the federal government and recipients of federal funding to proactively undo patterns of segregation, exclusion, and inequity in housing and community development,” said Rep. Waters in the letter. “While I commend early executive actions on fair housing and racial equity under your Administration, I am deeply concerned that the long-awaited final rule to implement AFFH has yet to be released. In accordance with my 2020 request to you as then-President-Elect, I ask for the immediate release of the Department of Housing Urban Development’s (HUD) final AFFH rule to make good on the Democratic commitment to fair housing for all.”
Background on the AFFH rule
On February 9, 2023, HUD published in the Federal Register a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking entitled “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.” The rule, which builds on and refines HUD’s 2015 rule, would implement the Fair Housing Act’s statutory mandate that HUD ensure that recipients of its funding affirmatively further fair housing. The affirmatively further fair housing mandate requires the agency and its program participants to proactively take meaningful actions to overcome patterns of segregation, promote fair housing choice, eliminate disparities in opportunities, and foster inclusive communities free from discrimination.
Through implementation of the AFFH, HUD seeks to enhance equity, human dignity, social welfare, and justice for all protected class groups. The AFFH would address discriminatory housing policies and practices, while improving economic equity and economic growth within communities and throughout the nation, and that the AFFH will help ensure that people in protected classes have equitable access to affordable housing opportunities. Specifically, the AFFH would require program participants to identify fair housing issues facing their communities, using both data provided by HUD and local knowledge, and then commit to taking responsive actions. Fair housing outcomes would be locally driven based on the fair housing issues presented by local circumstances.
The AFFH is intended to empower and require program participants to meaningfully engage with their communities by allowing program participants to understand their local issues and develop goals necessary to achieve integrated living patterns, overcome historic and existing patterns of segregation, reduce racial and ethnic concentrations of poverty, increase access to homeownership, and ensure equal access to opportunity and community assets.
“Millions of people across the country, including communities of color, families with children, people with disabilities, and other protected classes, continue to face discrimination and targeted disinvestment in housing and community development,” said Rep. Waters in the letter to President Biden. “Since 2020, HUD and local fair housing organizations have received record-breaking levels of reported housing discrimination complaints each year, including over 33,000 in 2022 alone. Other barriers, such as redlining and exclusionary zoning and land use ordinances, continue to lock members of protected classes out of housing opportunities. Many communities across the country are also more segregated today than they were in 1990, which further entrenches poverty and wealth and homeownership gaps across racial and ethnic lines. We have also seen some local governments continue to distribute federal funds in discriminatory ways that violate the Fair Housing Act and AFFH requirements.”
Paving the way for equitable housing
The proposed AFFH rule includes refinements informed by HUD’s experience implementing the 2015 AFFH Rule, and input from many stakeholders. HUD used that information to propose a rule that would:
- Simplify the required fair housing analysis, making it easier for program participants to complete the analysis correctly and allowing more time and energy to be spent on effective goal setting.
- Provide more transparency to the public and greater opportunity for public input in the formulation and review of Equity Plans.
- Provide HUD with more practical ability to work with program participants to improve initial submissions and ensure that, when Equity Plans are accepted, they are fully compliant with the rule’s requirements.
- Provide a mechanism for regular progress evaluation.
- Provide for accountability by giving HUD and the public a greater set of enforcement options to ensure that program participants meet their planning commitments or revise commitments where circumstances change.
The proposed AFFH rule would also require larger, higher-capacity program participants to submit Equity Plans first. Submission deadlines would then be staggered across the different categories of program participants, again based on size as well as their respective program year or fiscal year start dates. The proposed rule encourages program participants to collaborate and submit a single “Joint Equity Plan” with other participants.
While HUD’s implementation of the 2015 AFFH Rule was limited due to the Trump Administration shutting down the rule’s operation, HUD learned from the fair housing goals established by program participants in their Assessments of Fair Housing.
“As we work to address our nation’s worsening affordable housing and homelessness crisis, we must recognize that ongoing housing discrimination, inequitable community development, and a lack of robust enforcement of the Fair Housing Act exacerbate that crisis,” added Rep. Waters in her letter. “Time is of the essence. I urge you to act quickly to release the final AFFH rule, and I thank you for your attention to this critical issue.”
Click here to read the full letter from Rep. Waters to President Biden regarding the AFFH rule.
