National Housing Law Project Urges HUD to Protect Tenants from Housing Discrimination and Withdraw AFFH Update

Trump’s AFFH Update Attacks Civil Rights and Contradicts Long-Established Fair Housing Law

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The National Housing Law Project today submitted a comment to Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), urging it to protect tenants and homeowners from housing discrimination and withdraw its Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) Revisions Interim Final Rule (IFR). Trump’s AFFH update is just one component of the administration’s ultimate plan to attack civil rights, slash funding for agencies and organizations that educate and enforce fair housing rights, and make it even harder for poor and working people to stay stably housed. The Fair Housing Act requires federal agencies and their funding recipients to affirmatively further fair housing by proactively addressing the legacy of segregation in programs and activities related to housing and community development.

“NHLP writes in strong opposition to the adoption of HUD’s 2025 AFFH IFR. HUD’s introduction of this IFR violates the Administrative Procedures Act and is not a fair housing rule. It does not meet HUD’s statutory AFFH obligation and is wholly inconsistent with fair housing law. Instead, it prioritizes the Administration’s deregulatory agenda, and taken together with the Administration’s other actions – refusal to enforce the Equal Access Rule, attempts to defund fair housing enforcement organizations, revocation of guidance on serving people with limited English proficiency, HUD directives denying eligible immigrants access to federal housing programs, attempts to eliminate the use of disparate impact liability in civil rights litigation – it promotes discrimination against the very communities that the Fair Housing Act and other civil rights laws were enacted to protect,” wrote the National Housing Law Project in the comment.

The comment urges HUD to withdraw Trump’s AFFH update for a range of issues. The new rule:

• Bypassed the public notice and comment process before taking effect, violating the Administrative Procedures Act;
• Imposes a new definition of AFFH that is inconsistent with the Fair Housing Act and that conflates affordable housing with fair housing;
• Permits a bare bones certification of a program participant’s compliance with its AFFH obligation and lacks a complaint process for challenging a program participant’s AFFH certification;
• Removes the requirement that program participants engage in fair housing planning processes or produce a fair housing planning document;
• Eliminates the requirement for robust community engagement in identifying fair housing issues;
• Lacks guidance for jurisdictions, program participants or public housing authorities regarding their AFFH obligation and does not require them to examine or address the legacy of housing segregation in communities; and
• Lacks any mechanism for meaningful monitoring and enforcement actions by HUD of entities that receive federal housing dollars and fail to fulfill their AFFH obligation.

Read the National Housing Law Project’s comment here.