President Biden’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is taking steps towards requiring state and local governments to submit “equity plans” to the federal government to display compliance to fair housing rules.
President Biden’s HUD submitted a proposed rule that would require local governments to submit plans and reports relating to civil rights concerns or else risk losing subsidies from the federal government, the Washington Examiner reported.
The requirements are part of a rule called “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” and are said to follow through on one portion of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which mandated that localities “affirmatively further” fair housing in response to historical segregation.
One version of the rule had been implemented under the Obama administration before it was repealed by former President Donald Trump, who warned that the Democrats would “abolish our beautiful and successful suburbs by placing far-left Washington bureaucrats in charge of local zoning decisions.” The former president also stated that, should Democrats implement their housing policies, “your home will go down in value and crime rates will rapidly rise.”
Then-President Barack Obama makes a statement in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Friday, November 13, 2015. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The Biden administration partially restored the Obama-era housing rule in June of 2022 before proposing this new rule, which includes compliance requirements for local governments.
Under the new rule, housing authorities would be required to submit equity plans every five years. The plans would have to specifically include “analysis of fair housing issues confronting their communities, goals, and strategies to remedy those issues in concrete ways, and a description of community engagement.”
Spencer Lindquist is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach out at slindquist@breitbart.com.