Senate Democrats release report alleging Trump admin undermined fair housing policies

Senate Democrats released a report Monday alleging that the Trump administration has undermined fair housing policies and exasperated racial inequities. 

The report showed the Trump administration has loosened enforcement of fair housing, “systematically undermining the progress that has been made over the past 50 years.”

According to the National Fair Housing Alliance data cited in the report, annual complaints of fair housing violations went up by 3,000 between 2016 and 2018.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, said in a statement that housing inequality in the U.S. “is not an accident. This is by design.” 

“This report takes a hard look at our nation’s history of housing discrimination, describes how the Trump Administration’s actions undermine that fight, and lays out the work that Congress and regulators must do to reverse the harm done by this Administration and move forward in our continued fight for racial justice and equality,” Brown said. “We must keep up the fight to make our housing system more just.”

In July the White House announced that it would repeal the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule and replace it with its own policy, named Preserving Community and Neighborhood Choice. 

“While ostensibly aimed at allowing communities to exclude low-income people from living in their neighborhoods, the Trump Administration is clearly aware that such a policy would have the effect of excluding people of color from these communities,” the report read.