We can only hope that the Senate has enough spirit to defeat the welfare renewal bill, as it did last year, and kill this mean-spirited public housing rule.
The 2015 Obama housing rule staggered the deadlines for cities and counties to submit desegregation plans.
HUD effectively suspended the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, a 2015 regulation that required any community receiving HUD development block-grant funding to routinely identify instances of racial segregation and provide solutions to counter them.
The most significant administrative change has been the department's 2012 equal access housing rule, which bars officials at HUD-funded housing units from making decisions based on an applicant's actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.
Last week, HUD announced that it had come to an agreement with Bank of America to settle the claim of discrimination under the new Equal Access to Housing rule.
Instead, the city is working on an "analysis of impediment" report, which is what HUD used to require of cities. Caldwell said the city may incorporate elements of the 2015 housing rule, such as the interactive map, in its report.
The HUD housing rule is "important as a prod, or a symbol, but it's a weak rule to begin with," Rothstein said, because it assumes that white communities aren't aware that they're segregated and want to do the right thing.
