NYU Furman Center Submits Public Comment on Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Revisions, 90 Fed. Reg. 11020 (proposed March 3, 2025), Docket ID: HUD-2023-0009
New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy appreciates the opportunity to submit comments on the U.S. Department of Housing and UrbanDevelopment’s (HUD) Interim Final Rule, “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Revisions” (the “2025 Interim Final Rule”).
The Furman Center has conducted research over the last three decades on residential segregation and its connections to housing patterns, neighborhood conditions, mobility and opportunity. Our comments draw lessons from our research, showing the type of analysis and planning that is needed, the kinds of disparities that analysis would show, and why it is critical that HUD, as a matter of good policy, publish an AFFH rule that requires real action and planning processes so recipients and HUD will effectively meet statutory requirements.
Our research shows segregation and neighborhood inequality in the City’s schools, eviction filing rates, voucher utilization rates, where new units (including affordable units) are built, investments in public housing, disparities, and homeownership rates. Our research also shows policymakers are faced with choices when crafting property tax exemptions and zoning text amendments that will significantly impact fair housing metrics.
A rule that compels policymakers receiving federal funds to report on and actively plan to address these disparities is critical if we want to make progress in reducing the legacy of discrimination. This legacy of discrimination was forcefully acknowledged by Justice Kennedy and the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015 when they said “[m]uch progress remains to be made in our Nation’s continuing struggle against racial isolation” and “the Court acknowledges the Fair Housing Act’s continuing role in moving the Nation toward a more integrated society.”
After decades of ineffective enforcement of the Fair Housing Act’s mandates, the effects of segregation remain widespread in American cities, at an enormous social cost. HUD’s efforts to fulfill its obligation to affirmatively further fair housing over four decades have continuously fallen short. The 2021 Interim Final Rule to affirmatively further fair housing and the 2015 Final Rule provided a framework so HUD could hold recipients of funding accountable if they do not take meaningful actions towards meeting the agency’s own statutory mandate. HUD should work to improve on and expand this approach. HUD’s 2025 Interim Final Rule would weaken the obligation on recipients of federal funds to the point of effectively eliminating the AFFH obligation, resulting in a continuing legacy problem at tremendous cost. We urge HUD to reconsider.
