In the final stretch of the 2020 election, the issue of suburban voters is still a hot topic, including claims that President Donald Trump’s efforts to preserve safe and pleasant neighborhoods from forced diversity is really a “dog whistle” to whites to earn their votes.

Trump’s efforts include reversing an Obama era housing rule from 2015 that required more than a thousand suburban neighborhoods that received federal housing and urban development block grants and other federal aid to prove no discrimination toward low-income housing existed.

The Washington Examiner’s Washington Secrets columnist Paul Bedard was given access to information from Housing and Urban Development (HUD), led by Secretary Ben Carson, that revealed even after killing the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, suburbs are more diverse now than ever before

Instead of restrictive regulations, HUD has been putting federal money into “opportunity zones” to help people become homeowners, Bedard reported:

Then the presidential campaign heated up, and now the issue is red-hot. Democrat Joe Biden has promised to bring the rule back, and surrogates have called President Trump a racist for killing it, and Trump has warned that Biden would ruin suburbs by requiring high-density buildings that would bring crime to leafy neighborhoods.

But new figures compiled in a HUD study and provided to Secrets show that it isn’t 1970 anymore and that minorities are well represented and expanding in the suburbs. In fact, Democrats and the Washington media only had to look eight miles from the White House to suburban Prince George’s County, Maryland, which is 62 percent black and 20 precent Hispanic.

HUD Secretary Ben Carson told Secrets, “While racism is no longer a widely held belief, it is a powerful accusatory term. The idea that the suburbs belong to one racial group is outdated and bigoted, and this study puts it to rest.”

As Breitbart News reported, Trump has, in fact, spoken about the diversity in America’s suburbs today.

Trump said:

By the way, 30 percent of the people living in suburbia are minority groups — African American, Hispanic American, Asian American. They’re minority groups. They don’t want to have their American dream fulfilled and then have a low-income housing project built right next to their house or in the neighborhood. They don’t want it. That’s not part of the deal.

Bedard reported that HUD, using a Brookings Institution study model, found that 38 percent of suburban residents are minority, a number that reflects the minority share of the total U.S. population.

“The results showed that 52 percent of black people live in the suburbs, as do 60 percent of Hispanics and 62 percent of Asian Americans,” Bedard reported. “Overall, 38.8 percent of suburban households are nonwhite.”

The data also showed that black homeownership under Trump climbed from 41.7 percent to 46.3 percent by the end of March. For Hispanics, home ownership grew from 44 percent in December 2016 to 48.9 percent at the end of the first quarter of 2020.

“Carson told Secrets that the study showing a strong minority presence in suburbia should dismiss claims of racial bias by his team or Trump.”

“Americans of every racial and ethnic background call the suburbs ‘home,’ and data indicate that this trend will continue,” Carson said. “It’s a travesty that so many Americans work to improve the quality of life for their families only to be thwarted by those who can’t admit when they’re wrong.”

“We must not use false stereotypes to suppress the fact that the American dream is open to all, regardless of race, religion, or gender,” Carson said.

Follow Penny Starr on Twitter