Ben Carson’s disturbing retreat on fair housing

THE UNITED STATES has made progress in residential desegregation since the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968. Segregation between whites and blacks, as measured by demographers, declined by roughly a third between 1970 and 2010, according to statistical analysis by University of Michigan sociologist William H. Frey. Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go toward the ideal of discrimination-free housing. To cite just one example, a recently published undercover investigation by the Long Island-based newspaper Newsday found that real estate agents subjected fully 40 percent of minority “testers” posing as homebuyers to disadvantageous treatment relative to whites.

Recognizing the unfinished business, the Obama administration in 2015 promulgated a new regulation pursuant to the Fair Housing Act’s requirement that the federal government “affirmatively . . . further the policies of” the 1968 law. The regulation would have put teeth into that long-underenforced provision by requiring cities and towns to examine housing patterns for evidence of unlawful discrimination, then formulate plans to overcome it, as a condition of eligibility for federal housing and development aid.

Now, however, the Trump administration has formalized plans to undo the Obama-era rule. On Tuesday, it released a draft rule that waters down the definition of “affirmatively furthering fair housing.” The 2015 rule called for “meaningful actions” that “replac[e] segregated living patterns with truly integrated and balanced living patterns”; now merely “advancing fair housing choice within the program participant’s control or influence” will pass muster with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Continue reading.