Obama administration announces new housing segregation rules – FOX 32

The rule clarifies and simplifies existing fair housing obligations and creates a streamlined process for evaluating fair housing, the HUD statement said.

The new regulations are consistent with a long neglected mandate of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which required recipients of HUD funding to reduce barriers to fair housing, so as to promote greater equality of opportunity.

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s rule change will add scrutiny to the way communities administer federal housing money, to ensure they comply with the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

“HUD will provide open data to grantees and the public on patterns of integration and segregation, racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty, disproportionate housing needs, and disparities in access to opportunity”, the agency said.

“We have a long history as it relates to fair housing”, Emanuel said while standing at the site that once housed Stateway Garden’s eight high-rise public housing buildings, which along with Cabrini-Green and the Robert Taylor Homes were once some of the country’s most striking symbols of urban blight.

In a press release, HUD commits to “provide additional guidance and technical assistance to facilitate local decision-making on fair housing priorities and goals for affordable housing and community development”. “Unfortunately, too many Americans find their dreams limited by where they come from, and a ZIP code should never determine a child’s future”.

“Policy makers at the local level now have a stronger tool for how they can bring about equal opportunity for their communities”, Castro said.

Civil rights advocates see the new rules as an antidote to the heavy-handed social engineering of decades past, when the federal government actively encouraged residential segregation by systematically denying mortgage subsidies to communities with African-Americans.

The Fair Housing Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. The law was expanded in 1988 to bar housing discrimination based on disability or family status.