Justice

The Trump Administration Just Derailed a Key Obama Rule on Housing Segregation

HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing policy required communities to confront racial inequities in housing. Now, it’s being postponed.
HUD Secretary Ben CarsonJonathan Ernst/Reuters

The Trump administration is rolling back the deadline for a key rule on fair housing made into law under President Barack Obama—a change with potentially broad consequences for racial segregation.

The new guidance will give communities until well after 2020 to comply with an Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule put in place two years ago. The Obama-era rule represented a long-awaited effort to give teeth to a federal Civil Rights-era requirement that local governments take active steps to undo racial segregation.