A recent decision by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has hampered efforts to ensure that federal civil rights law is being followed in the distribution of disaster mitigation funding in Texas, even while numerous national organizations, including NLIHC’s Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition (DHRC), have urged the federal government to move quickly to ensure compliance with the law.
In March 2022, HUD issued a civil rights determination in response to one of four complaints filed with its Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO) office about a program undertaken by the Texas General Land Office (GLO). The determination found that the state had discriminated against non-white communities in southeast Texas when distributing mitigation funds for areas impacted by Hurricane Harvey. The funds were part of $2.1 billion in disaster mitigation funding provided to the state and were distributed through a GLO-established competition that penalized areas with larger overall and larger non-white populations and that directed funds to rural counties with larger white populations. HUD’s determination that the Texas GLO’s program was discriminatory was the result of an administrative complaint filed in June 2021 by NLIHC partners Texas Housers and the Northeast Action Collective. NLIHC issued a statement in March 2022 following the announcement of HUD’s determination calling it a “historic decision.” NLIHC and other national organizations also sent a letter in May 2022 thanking the agency for the decision.
However, the Texas General Land Office (GLO) failed to meet a HUD-imposed deadline to respond to a request by HUD to enter into an agreement to fix aspects of the state’s plan to distribute HUD disaster mitigation funds to county governments. NLIHC and 10 other national housing and civil rights organizations sent a letter to HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge on September 21 requesting that the agency suspend funding for Texas’s disaster mitigation program following the state’s failure to enter into negotiations after the finding of discrimination by HUD’s FHEO. The letter recommended that funds be withheld until the state entered into a Voluntary Compliance Agreement (VCA) with HUD. The letter also recommended that the case be referred to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for further action.
Thanks to pressure from local, state, and national groups, including the DHRC, HUD finally referred the matter to DOJ, nine months after the GLO failed to meet HUD’s deadline for negotiations. However, just two days later, DOJ announced that it would not be taking any action on the matter, referring it back to HUD while citing a related and ongoing “Fair Housing Act” investigation and urging HUD to continue seeking voluntary compliance from Texas. The DOJ’s response was signed by Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who heads the agency’s Office of Equal Rights.
“We urge HUD and DOJ to move quickly to resolve the remaining investigation and if necessary to move to enforcement in order to cure the discrimination that the state of Texas has engaged in,” said Ben Martin, Research Director at Texas Housers, a member of the DHRC, in a news article announcing the DOJ response. “Also, both DOJ and HUD have urged the state to participate in voluntary negotiations to resolve the matter and to get desperately needed assistance to the communities who were discriminated against. We stand ready to act to resolve this issue.”