CityLab Daily: Demanding a Fair Housing Plan

Texas hold’em: Fair housing advocates in Texas are suing the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in an effort to make the Trump administration enforce a fair housing rule 50 years in the making. The policy itself goes back to the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which requires communities that accept federal dollars to “affirmatively further fair housing.” That hasn’t happened, of course. But the Obama-era rule at the center of this lawsuit requires jurisdictions to draw up a fair-housing action plan, a first step toward desegregation.

Or at least, that’s what the rule did, before Secretary Ben Carson suspended it in January. The lawsuit filed this morning by Texas housing advocates would force the department to resume implementing the rule—which would have a big impact on how Texas spends $5 billion in federal hurricane recovery funds. As CityLab’s Kriston Capps reports, the future of fair housing may be settled in the Lone Star State.