HUD, Carson sued over delay of anti-segregation rule

WASHINGTON — A group of advocacy organizations filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the Department of Housing and Urban Development and its secretary, Ben Carson, over his decision to delay an Obama-era rule intended to ensure that communities confront and address racial segregation.

The suit filed by the National Fair Housing Alliance, Texas Appleseed and Texas Low Income Housing Information Service argues that Carson illegally suspended the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Act when he abruptly announced this year that cities and counties receiving federal funds won’t be required to analyze housing data and submit plans to HUD for addressing segregation until after 2020.

Asked for comment, a HUD spokesman sent a copy of the agency’s Jan. 4 announcement of the rule delay.

Finalized in 2015, the rule for the first time required more than 1,200 jurisdictions receiving HUD block grants and housing aid to analyze housing stock and come up with a plan for addressing patterns of segregation and discrimination. If HUD determined that the plan, called a Fair Housing Assessment, wasn’t sufficient, the city or county would have to rework it or risk losing funding.

HUD said in January that it would immediately stop reviewing plans that had been submitted but not yet accepted, and that jurisdictions won’t have to comply with the rule until after 2020. The agency said the postponement was in response to complaints from communities that had struggled to complete assessments and produce plans meeting HUD’s standards; of the 49 submissions HUD received in 2017, roughly a third were sent back.

“What we heard convinced us that the Assessment of Fair Housing tool for local governments wasn’t working well,” HUD said in the statement. “In fact, more than a third of our early submitters failed to produce an acceptable assessment — not for lack of trying but because the tool designed to help them to succeed wasn’t helpful.”

Carson in an editorial in 2015 criticized the rule as being a form of “social engineering.”

But the suit says the fact that submissions are failing to meet the requirements “reaffirms, rather than calls into question, why HUD thought the rule necessary.”

Attorney Michael Allen said Carson’s action “tells every opponent of integration, every opponent of affordable housing and good neighborhoods, whether they’re individuals or elected officials or local governments, that nobody will put pressure on them at the HUD level for the foreseeable future.”

He said, “That means they’ll keep doing what they’re doing, which is perpetuating segregation.”