Dive Brief:
- HUD’s Office for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity has launched an investigation into Boston’s housing practices, which it believes violate civil rights protections of White people under the Fair Housing Act and Title VI, per a Dec. 11 press release.
- The agency said in a Dec. 11 letter that under Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, city officials have tried to “smuggle” racial equity into the city’s operations and intend to implement discriminatory housing policies. It warned that no one “is permitted to violate civil rights protections in the name of ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.’”
- The city has various policies and plans to reduce existing racial disparities through homeownership and other opportunities. A spokesperson from Wu’s office said in an email, “Boston will never abandon our commitment to fair and affordable housing, and we will defend our progress to keep Bostonians in their homes against these unhinged attacks from Washington.”
Dive Insight:
HUD Secretary Scott Turner alleged in the agency’s release that Boston’s housing strategy is racially discriminatory, and said that it will thoroughly investigate its “goal of integrating racial equity into every layer of city government.” HUD gave Boston 10 business days to respond to the allegations and provide additional information.
“We believe the City of Boston has engaged in a social engineering project that intentionally advances discriminatory housing policies driven by an ideological commitment to DEI rather than merit or need,” Turner said in the release. “This warped mentality will be fully exposed, and Boston will come into full compliance with federal anti-discrimination law.”
Specifically, HUD cites Boston’s 2022 Fair Housing Assessment, which promises to target homebuyer outreach to households of color, after the Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston testing found that “Black and Latinx residents” experience discrimination in around half of their attempts to rent, purchase or finance homes. It also calls out its Housing Strategy 2025, which sets the goal that at least 65% of city-sponsored opportunities to buy homes go to households of color, and claims Boston’s Anti-Displacement Action Plan “appears to revive government-sponsored redlining.”
HUD’s move follows its earlier Sept. 18 letter to the Mayor’s Office of Housing, notifying the city that it had reason to believe that Boston was using the agency’s grant assistance in violation of anti-discrimination law prohibiting race-based preferences.
Jacy Gaige, former director of enforcement in HUD’s FHEO, who stepped down in July, told GBH that HUD is “purporting to investigate the kinds of practices that have in fact been required by courts under these very laws to help address the legacy of discrimination in this country.”
This is not the city’s first tangle with the Trump administration over housing policy.
Earlier this month, Boston joined 11 other jurisdictions and nonprofits in a lawsuit to stop changes to HUD’s Continuum of Care grant program and prevent it “from creating unlawful and unreasonable restrictions on funding for proven solutions to homelessness, threatening to push hundreds of thousands of families and individuals onto the street as cold winter months arrive.”
