A Republican member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights called on Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson to immediately rescind a rule meant to alleviate discrimination in housing, saying that the rule represents federal overreach into local government.
Commissioner Peter Kirsanow told the HUD secretary in a letter that the rule, finalized in 2015 under former President Barack Obama, is “a profoundly flawed rule, representing a significant assertion of federal control over matters of local concern.”
Responding to a report in the Washington Examiner that Carson would “reinterpet” the rule rather than rescind it, Kirsanow said HUD must immediately start undoing the rule.
Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, as the rule is called, provides demographic and socioeconomic data to local governments, as well as a tool for identifying challenges facing protected groups such as minorities. Using that information, the localities are supposed to develop plans for addressing inequities. At some point, block grant funding could be affected in HUD’s assessment of those plans.
Kirsanow warned that private entities could sue towns for discrimination over the results of those assessments, and in that case housing policy would be “heavily influenced by racial bean-counting.”
The Obama administration wrote the rule to implement part of the 1968 Fair Housing Act that called on governments to act to address discrimination in the housing market.
Kirsanow, a former George W. Bush appointee to the National Labor Relations Board and a conservative commentator, reportedly interviewed with President Trump for a position in the administration last year.
