Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed a motion by advocates for a preliminary injunction against HUD for withdrawing the Assessment Tool required to complete an Assessment of Fair Housing (AFH) under the July 16, 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule. The plaintiffs are the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service (Texas Housers), and Texas Appleseed (see Memo, 5/14). In the August 18 opinion, the judge found that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue, and that even if they had standing the plaintiffs would not have been entitled to preliminary injunctive relief.
“The federal government, states, and local communities have been required by law since 1968 to work to undo the segregated communities that federal housing policy created in the first place,” said Diane Yentel, NLIHC president and CEO. “But it has only been for the last three years that communities were equipped with the tools and guidance needed to meet their obligations under the law. [The] ruling by the court is deeply disappointing. It allows HUD to scrap the years of extensive input and intensive work that went into the fair housing rule and instead revert to the agency’s previous flawed and failed system. In doing so, Secretary Carson will continue his pattern of attempts to weaken and disrupt the agency’s responsibility to uphold its fair housing duties.”
This ruling leaves HUD in a position to move forward with reconsidering and, potentially, rewriting the AFFH rule. Last week, HUD published an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) to do just that. Plaintiffs and advocates are considering other options to ensure that HUD carry out its fair housing responsibilities.
Read NLIHC’s full analysis of the judge’s ruling at: https://bit.ly/2wdU0tD
Read NLIHC’s statement on the ruling at: https://bit.ly/2nPnjPw
Read National Fair Housing Alliance’s statement here at: https://bit.ly/2LbsMJx
The Court Opinion is at: https://bit.ly/2N2xTh0
The Court Order is at: https://bit.ly/2vV9kMo
More information about the AFFH rule is on page 7-5 of NLIHC’s 2018 Advocates’ Guide at: https://bit.ly/2G2zU8q
More information about the AI process is on page 7-17 of NLIHC’s 2018 Advocates’ Guide at: https://bit.ly/2IckAIB