CityLab Daily: HUD Slow-Rolls Fair Housing Investigations

  1. Andrew Small

Also: The real cost of luring big companies, and mapping the global reach of tobacco.

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What We’re Following

Hold up: Secretary Ben Carson’s efforts to change the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s mission statement wasn’t just a matter of words. Current and former HUD officials tell The New York Times that the Trump administration is attempting to scale back federal efforts to enforce fair housing laws. Internal agency emails show the department put a freeze on about a half-dozen “secretary-initiated” fair housing investigations last November. In the past, the agency has used high-profile cases to set precedent and put other localities and businesses on notice.

Uber update: The family of a Elaine Herzberg, who was killed by an autonomous vehicle operated by Uber earlier this month, has reached a settlement with the ride-hailing company, per Reuters.

—Andrew Small

More on CityLab

The Real Cost of Luring Big Companies to Town

A new economic analysis suggests that when cities and states offer tax deals for large companies, public education suffers and incomes eventually fall.

Sarah Holder

California's Housing Prices Need to Come Down

Shifting control of housing decisions from local to state oversight could be a way to slow the rise of California’s house prices. A newly proposed bill, SB 827, is a step in that direction.

Issi Romem

Mapping the Global Reach of Tobacco

The Tobacco Atlas shows how even non-smokers feel the public health impacts of the industry.

Alastair Boone

A New Tool to Fight Disaster Insurance Fraud: Satellites

Hi-res images taken from orbit can more accurately track damage from extreme weather events.

Sophie Yeo

Which U.S. Cities Are Most Food Truck-Friendly?

A new study breaks down where the administrative hurdles to opening a restaurant on wheels are the worst.

Richard Florida

Video of the Day

Animated gif from Curbed's "Tiny Towns, USA" video
(Curbed)

Our friends at Curbed have a new video series: Tiny Towns, USA. They visit four cities—Detroit, Portland, Las Vegas, and Reno—to investigate how tiny houses are evolving from a “quirky lifestyle fetish” into a solution to the housing challenges that cities face today. Related: In Baltimore, a tiny-home program puts a twist on addressing the housing crisis.

What We’re Reading

Hurricane Harvey woke Houston up. Now things have to change. (Quartz)

The real retail killer: private equity (The New Republic)

Private companies want to replace public transport. Should we let them? (The Guardian)

Trump promised $1.5 trillion in infrastructure. He’s 1 percent of the way there. (Washington Post)

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