Biden Revives Housing Rule That Trump Derided as ‘Abolishing the Suburbs’
A civil rights-era fair housing policy is back, with new tweaks aimed at making it easier to snuff out segregation.
A two-story house in the Roland Park/Guilford neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, in 1910. The streetcar suburb was one of the first planned communities in the US and is considered an early example of the enforcement of racial segregation through the use of restricted covenants.
Source: JHU Sheridan Libraries/Gado/Archive Photos/Getty Images
The Biden administration is restoring a rule that will require cities, counties and states that receive federal housing funds to examine patterns of residential segregation within their borders and take steps to uproot them, a mandate that was first established by civil rights–era legislation but has proved almost impossible to enact.
President Donald Trump ripped up the previous standard, known as the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, which he condemned as a federal push to “abolish the suburbs” in the run-up to the presidential election in 2020. Soon after taking office, President Joe Biden pledged to reverse Trump’s decisions on AFFH and once again take steps toward an elusive goal of erasing color lines in American neighborhoods.