Secretary Carson Says HUD Will ‘Reinterpret’ AFFH Rule

On July 14, a group of Senate Republicans led by Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) sent a letter to Secretary Carson asking him to rescind HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule. The rule requires cities and towns that receive federal funding to examine their local housing patterns for racial bias and to design a plan to address any measurable bias. The letter claims that the rule would “extend the reach of the federal government beyond its authority and could take away state and local governments’ ability to make local zoning decisions.”

In 2015, in an op-ed published in The Washington Times, Secretary Carson called the AFFH rule a “social-engineering scheme” and said that the rule and the Supreme Court ruling on disparate impact are “government-engineered attempts to legislate racial equality and create consequences that often make matters worse.”

Now that Secretary Carson is in charge of HUD, he stated, in an interview with the Washington Examiner, that HUD will move to “reinterpret” the AFFH rule and how it is used. Secretary Carson did not provide any detail on how exactly the rule will be “reinterpreted.” And this statement came days after Congressional Republicans sent the letter asking to repeal the AFFH rule.