On Tuesday, April 11, NLIHC celebrated the 55th anniversary of the passage of the “Fair Housing Act” by calling on policymakers to continue working to advance racial and social equity. “Housing justice and racial justice are inextricably linked,” said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of NLIHC. “The Fair Housing Act created critical, foundational rights and protections for marginalized people and communities, but our nation must do more to rectify decades of racist housing policies that created today’s segregated neighborhoods and have resulted in harm to so many children and families in our country. To fully achieve the vision of the Fair Housing Act, we must build the political will for the large-scale, sustained investments and anti-racist reforms needed to ensure that all people, including those with the lowest incomes and those most marginalized, have quality homes that are accessible and affordable in communities of their choice.”
Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on April 11, 1968, the Fair Housing Act made housing discrimination unlawful and required state and local jurisdictions to take action to “affirmatively further fair housing” (AFFH) by promoting fair housing choice and fostering inclusive communities to ensure that all neighborhoods had equitable access to high-quality schools, healthy food, clean air and water, reliable transportation, quality healthcare facilities, and other resources and amenities. The act also required state and local jurisdictions to take action to undo historic patterns of segregation and other types of discrimination that resulted in the creation of racially segregated, under-resourced communities that have persisted to this day.
Despite the act’s statutory language, the federal government did not provide meaningful guidance until 2015 about how communities could meet the legal requirement to correct discriminatory housing practices and undo the harms caused by racial segregation, housing discrimination, and disinvestment. Yet soon after, during the Trump administration, HUD suspended the 2015 regulation and abruptly and without public review or comment published the “Preserving Neighborhood and Community Choice” rule, which effectively gutted the obligation to affirmatively further fair housing. Shortly after taking office, the Biden administration published an Interim Final Rule to rescind the Trump mandate, announcing its intention to further improve the 2015 regulation. Earlier this year, the Biden administration released a proposed rule to not only help undo the harmful efforts by the Trump administration to undermine fair housing, but to simplify the fair housing analysis process while holding communities accountable for addressing racial inequities and advancing equity.
NLIHC supports legislation to expand the Fair Housing Act to prohibit housing discrimination against households based on “source of income” and to strengthen enforcement of the law’s protections.