Trump Ending Obama-Biden Regulation to Rezone Neighborhoods That’ll Effectively Abolish Suburbs.
Appearing at the White House Rose Garden on July 14, President Trump said enforcement of this regulation was a “key element” of former Vice President Joe Biden’s platform for president, saying it would “abolish the suburbs…”
According to Biden’s campaign website,
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“Biden will implement the Obama-Biden Administration’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule requiring communities receiving certain federal funding to proactively examine housing patterns and identify and address policies that have a discriminatory effect.”
Trump explained, “Enforce Obama-Biden’s radical AFFH — that’s the AFFH regulation that threatens to strip localities of federal affordable housing funds unless they change their zoning laws to fit the federal government’s demands. So what you have — I mean, I’ve been watching this for years in Westchester, coming from New York. They want low-income housing built in a neighborhood.”
But with changes to the rule released in January, the zoning mandates have been repealed. Trump said, “I’m ending that rule. I’m taking it out, so — I spoke with Ben Carson the other day. We’re going to be taking it out. I’ve watched that whole thing go, and now they want to make it twice as bad in the suburbs — in the suburbs. Mothers aren’t happy about that. Fathers aren’t happy about that. They worked hard to buy a house, and now they’re going to watch the housing values drop like a rock, and that has happened. It dropped like a rock. So we’re not going to do that; we’re going to do the exact opposite.”
Under the new rule that was finalized by the Trump administration on Jan. 14, “Jurisdictions are free to choose to undertake changes to zoning or land-use policies as one method of complying with the [fair housing] obligation; however, no jurisdiction may have their certification questioned because they do not choose to undertake zoning changes.”
This differed drastically from the original 2015 regulation had included an explicit requirement calling for changes to local zoning, stating, “This final rule, and Assessment Tools and guidance to be issued, will assist recipients of Federal funding to use that funding and, if necessary, adjust their land use and zoning laws in accordance with their existing legal obligation to affirmatively further fair housing.”