Fair Housing Baltimore Metro

04/27/2025

The Maryland Center for History and Culture has a Great Digital Collection of Exhibits - Including on Segregation - on its Website and Available in Balltimore

The Museum at the Maryland Center for History and Culture (in the Meyerhoff Courtyard at 610 Park Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21201. 410-685-3750.) has a great digital collection of audio and informational exhibits on its website and available in person. It is a statewide resource headquartered in f Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood cultural district, featuring over 1,000 objects on display in 15 permanent and rotating exhibition galleries and with a library housing 7 million books, documents, manuscripts, and photographs available for research and scholarship. The Center has a museum, library, holds educational programs, and publishes scholarly works on Maryland. Altogether, the Center houses one of the country’s largest collections of state heritage maintained by a private, nonprofit institution. Formerly the Maryland Historical Society, it was founded on March 1, 1844, and is the oldest cultural institution in Maryland.

There is a vast collection at the H. Furlong Baldwin Library. The online collection on segregation includes "Juanita Jackson Mitchell and Virginia Jackson Kiah interview, 1975 (1975-07-15)," Gwynn Oak Amusement Park protestors riding ‘Freedom Now’ bus (1963-07-04), and Paul Robeson and Dr. John E. T. Camper protesting Ford’s Theatre Jim Crow admission policy (1948-03). The online resources has Research Guides, Finding Aids, Educator Resources, and more. Highlights of museum collection include: Native American archaeological artifacts dating to 5,000 B.C.; the world’s largest assembly of paintings by members of the Peale family; nine portraits by artist Joshua Johnson—recognized as the first professional African American artist in the United States; and Maryland landscape painting by Francis Guy. Visit the Exhibitions page for more information about all of the current exhibitions.

The Center is a community partner of Preserve the Baltimore Uprising, a digital archive devoted to preserving and making accessible media created and captured by people and organizations involved in or witness to the protests following Freddie Gray's death in 2015. The 2016-2017 exhibit "What & Why: Collecting at the Maryland Historical Society" included items from the Preserve the Baltimore Uprising collections in a video installation.

To visit the Museum, due to hourly capacity limits it is strongly encouraged that you book your ticket in advance. The admission rates are $12 - Adults, $10 - Seniors $9 - Students, free - Members and Children under 2, free first Thursdays. The The museum and shop hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday (With extended hours the first Thursday of each month until 8:00 p.m.).

Read the FAQs of the Center: https://www.mdhistory.org/visit/faqs/

04/27/2025

Plaque Honoring Housing Segregation Leader William L. Marbury Removed from Bolton Hill and Decommissioned by Baltimore

Baltimore's Board of Estimates has decommissioned and removed a raised plaque honoring a segregationist from public property in Bolton Hill and decommissioned by the city. The William L. Marbury Plaque was placed in the late 1930s at the south end of a wide median strip in the 1700 block of Park Avenue near the intersection of Park Avenue and Wilson Street by the Mt. Royal Garden Club, a predecessor of today’s Bolton Hill Garden Club where it remained for almost 90 years. It was installed to honor an attorney who lived in Bolton Hill in the early 1900s. After the November 2024 removal, there remains a hole in the ground Its removal from public property is consistent with the community’s wishes and the plaque has been given to the Marbury family, which was “willing and anxious” to receive it.The plaque was been removed in November 2024 from city-owned land in Bolton Hill and decommissioned by the city on Wednesday, January 8, 2025. The inscription on the plaque read: "William L. Marbury, Dec. 26, 1859 Oct. 26, 1935, Planted by Mt. Royal Garden Club."

He served as the U.S. Attorney for Maryland during the Grover Cleveland administration or as president of Maryland State Bar Association in 1910. He ran unsuccessfully for the U. S. Senate in 1913. The firm where he and his son worked for many years, then known as Marbury Miller and Evans, merged in 1952 with Piper, Watkins, Avirett & Egerton to create Piper & Marbury, now part of DLA Piper.

William Luke Marbury Sr. was also a segregationist - the founder in 1910 of the Mount Royal Protective Association, whose mission was “to halt African Americans from renting or purchasing property in the Mount Royal District, which included present-day Bolton Hill and Reservoir Hill.” Marbury had a record of promoting residential segregation.

“Marbury is credited with being the architect of redlining laws in Baltimore,” neighborhood resident and a past president of the Bolton Hill Community Association David Nyweide wrote in the December issue of The Bolton Hill Bulletin. “He actively tried to disenfranchise voters in Maryland with dark skin, even arguing, unsuccessfully, before the U. S. Supreme Court that the State of Maryland could legally strip their voting rights because Maryland never ratified the Fifteenth Amendment. He himself was a descendant of the plaintiff in Marbury v. Madison about a century earlier, the case which famously established the power of the Supreme Court to invalidate state laws and acts of Congress that contravene the Constitution.”

Historians also note that Marbury came from a family of plantation-owners in Southern Maryland who held slaves before moving to Baltimore in the 1870s. “Marbury helped draft several state bills designed to disenfranchise Black Marylanders’ voting rights from the late 1890s to 1911,” a 2020 report by the Bolton Hill committee. about Marbury. said. “As he told the Baltimore Sun in January 1910, ‘it is an anomalous condition that an inferior race should share the government with the superior one.’ “

By 1910, “Marbury had also become an advisor to members of the Baltimore City Council who were promoting residential segregation, and he help them draft a series of residential segregation laws between 1910 and 1917, among the earliest such urban statues in the country,” the report stated. “When they proved so conservative as to fail to pass constitutional muster in the Supreme Court, Marbury favored enforcement tools in the form of restrictive covenants and the Mount Royal Protective Association, which was founded with the explicit purpose to stop Black people from renting or purchasing homes in Bolton Hill.” In 1910, Baltimore was the first U.S. city to pass a residential segregation ordinance.

Marbury “did not…simply hold beliefs about racial segregation that were not uncommon for other white people of his time,” the committee stated in its report. “[H]e was instead a locally prominent white man who actively shaped the world of Jim Crow during the early twentieth century” and the plaque “memorializes a former resident of Bolton Hill who would not be honored today for his public, proactive efforts to disenfranchise Black people and inhibit them from living in the neighborhood.” Because of “the unverified reasons for the plaque’s placement but unequivocal knowledge of the revolting public reputation of the man honored by the plaque, the committee recommends removal,” the committee concluded, adding a suggestion that the plaque be given to “a Marbury descendant.” The garden club’s executive committee agreed with the recommendation to remove the plaque. The committee “considers the plaque to no longer represent the values of the garden club and the Bolton Hill neighborhood as it is a painful reminder to many of exclusionary and discriminatory times.”

Nyweide said in his article that there was some debate within the community about removing the plaque. “Reasonable, dissenting voices to removing the plaque were concerned that it would erase the odious history it signified, where dispensing with it would be a convenient means of ignoring the history of segregation in Bolton Hill,” he wrote. “Yet, that history remains despite the absence of the plaque on the Park Avenue median, and the public historic markers committee’s work was a means of drawing attention to it. As the committee concluded, the plaque was placed to honor a man whose legacy would not be honored with such a plaque today by the Bolton Hill Garden Club nor by the Bolton Hill Community Association. His former residence does not bear a Blue Plaque [marking the homes of noteworthy Bolton Hill residents who have died.] The Marbury plaque’s placement amid a grassy median on Park Avenue had become as incongruous as the man himself would be today.”

“To his descendants, the Marbury plaque is a familial artifact,” he wrote. “They had no say in inheriting the racist legacy of their forebearer, just as today’s residents of Bolton Hill did not live in the neighborhood of Marbury’s day. The Marbury plaque remains, just not where it was originally planted.”

Read the January 8, 2025 Baltimore FishBowl article:

04/27/2025

U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ) Files Proposed Settlement Agreements Regarding Accessibility Retrofits


The settlement agreements were filed on March 25 and 27, 2025, the at, respectively, The Kendrick, in Needham, Massachusetts, and Emerson at Edge on the Hudson, in Sleepy Hollow, New York. The complaint, which was filed on June 18, 2024, alleges that several Toll-related entities and others violated the Fair Housing Act by failing to design and construct residential properties in New York and elsewhere with the required accessibility features. The case was referred to the Department of Justice after the Department of Housing and Urban Development received a complaint, conducted an investigation, and issued a charge of discrimination. The complaint is also based on evidence obtained by the USDOJ's Fair Housing Testing Program.

On June 25, 2024, the court approved a consent decree between the U.S. and Defendant Lendlease Construction LMB Inc. The decree requires Lendlease not to discriminate in future design and construction, implement an educational program, and pay a $10,000 civil penalty. On July 28, 2024, the court approved a consent decree between the U.S. and Defendant GreenbergFarrow Architecture, Inc. The decree requires GreenbergFarrow not to discriminate in future design and construction, implement an educational program, and pay a $30,000 civil penalty.

On January 8, 2025, the U.S. Attorney’s Office filed a second amended complaint. On March 1, 2025, the court approved a settlement agreement regarding retrofits at Parc at Princeton Junction, in Princeton, New Jersey. On March 4, 2025, the court approved a proposed settlement agreement regarding retrofits at another property, The Morgan, in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Read the April 2, 2025 USDOJ article: https://www.justice.gov/crt/recent-accomplishments-housing-and-civil-enforcement-section

04/27/2025

META Oversight Allows Anti-Trans Hate from Others, But Tells Meta to Remove Its Own


GLAAD, the world’s largest le***an, gay, bisexual, transgender, and q***r (LGBTQ) media advocacy organization, has responded to a new decision announced by the Oversight Board, the body that makes pseudo-independent rulings about Facebook, Instagram, and Threads content moderation cases. GLAAD’s analysis of the ruling found a clear disagreement among the Oversight Board on the cases - the issued decision permits two posts containing anti-trans content, while notifying Meta that it must also remove anti-trans rhetoric it added to its hate speech policy in January. The Washington Post has reported that top Meta executives told the Oversight Board that the ruling should be “treated carefully” … “given the fraught political debate” about the rights of trans people in the U.S.

The Board ruled that the two harassing posts, one intentionally misgendering a transgender woman and the other intentionally misgendering a transgender girl, should remain (one on Facebook, the other on Instagram). They were both reshared by a prominent anti-LGBTQ account, inviting more visibility and harassment. The ruling expressly notes that the posts “misgender identifiable trans people,” yet asserts that the posts do not “represent bullying and harassment,” instead characterizing them as “public debate.” Although the majority of the Oversight Board supported Meta’s decision to allow the content, a minority expressly noted (in concurrence with GLAAD’s public comment submitted for the Board’s consideration) that the posts violate Meta’s Bullying and Harassment policy. The policy prohibits targeted misgendering of transgender people, stating: “all private minors, private adults (who must self-report), and minor involuntary public figures are protected from… claims about… gender identity.” Additional background is below, including the company’s caveats about who is protected by the policy and who is not.

Acknowledging Meta’s use of an anti-trans trope in its January 7, 2025 policy changes, and urging the company to remove it, the Oversight Board states: “Finally, the Board is concerned that Meta has incorporated the term ‘transgenderism’ into its revised Hateful Conduct policy. To ensure Meta’s content policies are framed neutrally and in line with international human rights standards, Meta should remove the term “transgenderism” from the Hateful Conduct policy and corresponding implementation guidance.” (“Transgenderism” is a popular right-wing anti-trans trope intended to falsely imply that being trans is an ideology.)

In September 2024, GLAAD submitted an official public comment regarding the two cases (“Gender Identity Debate Videos“), which address anti-transgender hate and harassment content. The Board’s ruling acknowledges Meta’s recent sweeping changes to its Hateful Conduct policy, including the removal of many policy protections for transgender people. Among the many rollbacks, the company said it will now allow calls “for exclusion or use insulting language in the context of discussing political or religious topics, such as when discussing transgender rights” (e.g. “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism [sic] and homosexuality [sic]”). GLAAD has spoken out extensively about how this policy language is dehumanizing hate speech in itself which is attempting to normalize anti-LGBTQ bigotry.

While Meta rolled back LGBTQ protection aspects of its Hateful Conduct policy in January, its policy continues to state that it prohibits hate and harassment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Even in Meta’s own logic, and as a minority of the Oversight Board expressly agree, the posts clearly violate Meta’s policy which still prohibits targeted misgendering of transgender people (i.e. “claims about gender identity”). While Meta’s updated Hateful Conduct policy still prohibits hate and harassment of people on the basis of protected characteristics including gender identity, the company has stated that it will now primarily rely on user reports to identify “less severe policy violations.”

While there are many interesting and complex aspects to the case, this primary aspect above (Meta’s existing policy protecting people from “claims about … gender identity”) should have made the Oversight Board’s adjudication straightforward. Arcane facets of Meta’s policy enforcement considerations created disagreement amongst the Board: including the question of whether the targeted subjects must self-report the accounts who target them, and whether the subjects should be considered public figures. (The policy only protects: “private minors, private adults (who must self-report), and minor involuntary public figures.”) GLAAD has long advocated for the removal of these distinctions and requirements — everyone should be protected.

Read GLAAD’s full public comment here.

As in GLAAD’s 2024 SMSI report, Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are largely failing to mitigate anti-LGBTQ hate and harassment. Meta’s enforcement failures have elicited longtime concern from the Oversight Board, trust and safety experts, human rights advocates, and Meta’s shareholders.

A 2024 GLAAD report found that Meta is failing to moderate extreme anti-trans hate across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The fourth annual GLAAD Social Media Safety Index & Platform Scorecard (SMSI)was released in June 2024. After reviewing six major platforms on 12 LGBTQ-specific indicators, all received low and failing scores: TikTok: 67%, Instagram: 58%, Facebook: 58%, YouTube: 58%, Threads: 51%, and X: 41%.

Key findings of the 2024 SMSI include:

Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric on social media translates to real-world offline harms.
Anti-LGBTQ hate speech and disinformation continues to be an alarming public health and safety issue.
Platforms are largely failing to mitigate this dangerous hate and disinformation and inadequately enforce their own policies.
Platforms disproportionately suppress LGBTQ content, including via removal, demonetization, and shadow-banning.
There is a lack of effective, meaningful transparency reporting from the platforms.
Read the April 24, 2025 GLAAD article:https://glaad.org/releases/meta-oversight-board-allows-anti-trans-hate-from-others-but-tells-meta-to-remove-its-own/

04/21/2025

Attempt by the DOGE-linked General Services Administration to Sell the Alabama Freedom Riders Museum is Stopped

The attempt by officials of the General Services Administration (GSA) - which manages federal property - to sell the Freedom Rides Museum (210 South Court Street, Montgomery, Alabama 36104, 1-334-414-8647) was foiled by two outraged Alabama representatives working with a Republican Alabama senator. When U.S. Reps. Terri A. Sewell (D-AL7) and Shomari Figures (D-AL2) saw the GSA list, both immediately demanded that the station be spared. The site is “an essential historical landmark that not only honors the legacy of the Freedom Riders but also educates the public about our nation’s struggle for equality and justice.” The GSA officials included the building, which the Museum leases from the federal government, on a list of hundreds they planned to sell because they were “not core to government operations.”

Days later, ahead of a March 9th commemoration in nearby Selma marking the 60th anniversary of the protest known as Bloody Sunday, the lawmakers and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY8) blasted the Trump administration for trying to sell the site and vowed to protect it and the rest of the over-130 stops on the U.S. Civil Rights Trail that connects 15 states. The Trail is a collection of churches, courthouses, schools, museums, and other landmarks, primarily in the Southern states, where activists challenged segregation in the 1950s and 1960s to advance social justice.

Fortunately, Alabama U.S. Senator Katie Boyd Britt, an ally of President Donald Trump who had also attended the Selma commemoration, intervened and announced on April 9th that the Museum was no longer listed for closure.

The Museum, which draws visitors from across the country, is now recognized as an official destination on the Trail. It also is on the National Register of Historic Places, and has been rated as the 28th most popular museums in Alabama. This rehabilitated bus station has been restored to how it looked in 1961 and is the site of the 1961 attack on Freedom Riders when they arrived at the station. Recently, administration officials have edited National Park Service websites to minimize events and individuals opposing slavery and Black Americans’ struggle for civil rights. The military removed mention of the famed Tuskegee Airmen and Navajo code talkers from its websites and training materials. Public outcry prompted reversals.

Alabama’s Democrats introduced legislation March 12th to protect civil rights landmarks on the National Register. The legislation forbids the sale of federally owned landmarks on register. If the federal government does want to sell such a property, Congressional approval would be required.

Read the March 13, 2025 Alabama Daily News article: https://aldailynews.com/after-outcry-historic-montgomery-bus-station-will-not-be-sold/

Read the March 11, 2025 AL.com article: https://www.al.com/politics/2025/03/doge-no-longer-selling-this-historic-alabama-civil-rights-site-katie-britt-says.html

04/21/2025

Supreme Court of Maryland to Hear Source-of-Income Discrimination Case Addressing Landlords’ Use a Minimum Income Requirement in Violation of the HOME Act.

Brown, Goldstein & Levy, along with the Ray Legal Group, have petitioned the Supreme Court of Maryland to bypass the Appellate Court to hear a case involving Maryland’s HOME Act. In applying for an apartment owned by David S. Brown Enterprises, the tenant’s application for an apartment was denied because she did not satisfy a policy requiring applicants demonstrate an income equivalent to 2.5 times the full monthly market rent even though she would only be responsible for a small proportion of it after her voucher was applied. This policy would exclude the majority of voucher holders in the State.

In 2020, the State of Maryland passed a law forbidding landlords from discriminating against potential tenants based on their source of income. Although the HOME Act requires landlords to accept housing vouchers, landlords are using minimum income criteria divorced from voucher holders’ share of the rent in a way that harms tenants with rental subsidies. These policies are effectively a loophole that defeats the remedial intent of the HOME Act, which bans housing discrimination based on source of income in order to decrease segregation and provide more opportunities for economic mobility.

The Circuit Court of Baltimore County granted summary judgment to the landlord, reasoning that the policy did not violate the HOME Act because it was applied in a neutral way. The Supreme Court of Maryland will review the Circuit Court of Baltimore County’s decision. The Attorney General of Maryland submitted an amicus brief in support of the bypass petition.

In addition to the amicus brief filed by the Attorney General, eight local and national organizations collectively joined as amici in the case, including The Public Justice Center, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, National Housing Law Project, Equal Rights Center, National Fair Housing Alliance, Homeless Persons Representation Project, Fair Housing Justice Center, and Disability Rights Maryland.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments during the May session.

Read the February 13. 2025 Brownstein & Levy article: https://browngold.com/news/lauren-dimartino-supreme-court-of-md-home-act/

04/21/2025

Book Review: "Excluded: How Snob Zoning, NIMBYism, and Class Bias Build the Walls We Don't See"

Excluded: How Snob Zoning, NIMBYism, and Class Bias Build the Walls We Don't See.by Richard D Kahlenberg. JPublicAffairs, 2023. 352 pages. Hardcover, $35.00.

This is an indictment of America's housing policy that reveals the social engineering underlying our segregation by economic class, the social and political fallout that result, and what we can do about it. Kahlenberg integrates quantitative and qualitative evidence to illuminate one of the central controversies in contemporary America: how to reconcile the tension between class and race. He shows how ‘snob zoning’ leads to segregation by both race and class and thus blocks opportunity for all Americans.

While the American meritocracy officially denounces prejudice based on race and gender, it has spawned a new form of bias against those with less education and income. Millions of working-class Americans have their opportunity blocked by exclusionary snob zoning. These government policies make housing unaffordable, frustrate the goals of the civil rights movement, and lock in inequality in our urban and suburban landscapes.

Through accounts of families excluded from economic and social opportunity as they are victimized through “new redlining” that limits the type of housing that can be built, Kahlenberg illustrates why America has a housing crisis. He also illustrates why economic segregation matters since where you live affects access to transportation, employment opportunities, decent health care, and good schools. He shows that astonishingly the most restrictive zoning is found in politically liberal cities where racial views are more progressive. Despite this there is hope. Kahlenberg tells the inspiring stories of growing number of local and national movements working to tear down the walls that inflicts so much damage on the lives of millions of Americans.

04/16/2025

Obituary: The Reverend Joan Brown Campbell, Social & Civil Rights Activist Who Led U.S. Church Councils, 93


The Rev. Campbell once divided the White congregation of her church by inviting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to speak and then decades later - as a minister in King’s denomination - rose to lead an influential national alliance of churches. As general secretary of the National Council of Churches (NCC) - a group linking dozens of Christian denominations with over 40 million worshipers - Rev. Campbell endorsed priorities such as battling climate change and expanding health care that often spilled over into wider political debates.

From 1991 to 2000, she went on missions such as accompanying the Rev. Jesse Jackson to Serbia in 1999 to gain the release of three U.S. soldiers, captured on a patrol amid a NATO bombing campaign seeking to halt ethnic bloodshed during the breakup of Yugoslavia. She also was at the center of partisan and cultural shifts that strained the coalition of mainline Protestants, traditionally Black churches (such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church), and Orthodox traditions such as Greek and Assyrian. In response, Rev. Campbell formed a political lobbying group, the Interfaith Alliance.

In 1965 at her church in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, she was juggling dual roles as a mother raising three children and as a local activist, her home became a hub for groups supporting the civil rights movement and opposing the Vietnam War. During a visit by King to Cleveland, he met briefly with Rev. Campbell and mentioned offhand that he had never been invited to speak at a mostly White church in the area. She suggested he come to the Heights Christian Church, where she was belonged to the congregation. Some church members felt honored to host King, but other members rejected him, claiming the presence of the civil rights leader was too politically charged and divisive. Bomb threats were made targeting Rev. Campbell’s home. Eventually, a compromise was reached for King to speak on the church steps. “There were at least 3,000 people there to hear him, and that would have never been true had it been inside the church,” Rev. Campbell said.

King told the crowd: “Without brotherhood, we can’t survive.” On a nearby sidewalk, white-nationalist protesters marched against him. The showdown inspired Rev. Campbell to expand her activism, including working on the 1967 Cleveland mayoral campaign of Carl B. Stokes, who became the city’s first Black mayor.

She was ordained in 1980 by the Progressive National Baptist Convention, a denomination rooted in the civil rights movement whose members included King and Ralph Abernathy. Rev. Campbell’s ordination was later recognized by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the American Baptist Churches. She served as executive director of the U.S. office of the World Council of Churches, the umbrella group for national Christian church coalitions internationally. In 1986, she was the only woman among the clergy in the procession for Desmond Tutu when he became the Anglican Church archbishop in Cape Town. Rev. Campbell was elected in 1990 to lead the NCC, becoming the first ordained woman to head the group.

At a 1997 memorial service for the astronomer Carl Sagan, with whom Rev. Campbell had helped found the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, she recalled an exchange they had. “He would say to me, ‘You are so smart, why do you believe in God?’” she said. “And I’d say, ‘You are so smart, why don’t you believe in God?’” Her honors include the Interfaith Alliance Foundation’s Walter Cronkite Faith and Freedom Award in 2010 for promoting tolerance and public dialogue. Her book, Living into Hope: A Call to Spiritual Action for Such a Time as This was published in 2010 (Nashville, Tennessee: SkyLight Paths).

Rev. Campbell also served for 14 years as director of religion at the Chautauqua Institution, a retreat in western New York. In a 2012 sermon, alluding to her past activism, she urged the congregation to recognize their role in fighting for social justice. “I believe that it is in times of uncertainty,” she said, “when we question our thoughts and decisions, that God can enter our lives.”

Read the April 11, 2025 Washington Post obituary: https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2025/04/11/joan-campbell-churches-dies/

Read the April 10, 2025 New York Times obituary: https://www.blogger.com/u/2/blog/post/edit/420526987210458763/8414159454337412100 #

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04/14/2025

HUD Cuts Will Drastically Cut Government and Nonprofit Efforts to Reduce Housing Discrimination

The Trump administration’s cuts to fair housing funding have raised serious concerns about the ability to enforce civil rights laws and help people find affordable housing. It will make it harder for Americans to find safe and affordable places to live and may allow even more housing discrimination to go unchecked, according to current and former government employees, fair housing experts, and local organizations. Advocates say the overhaul will ultimately alienate, discourage, and hurt people seeking help.

Enforcement of the Fair Housing Act and other civil rights laws, which prohibit discrimination in public and private housing, is carried out by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), as well as state, local and nonprofit agencies that receive federal funding. Last year there were more than 34,000 fair housing complaints of all kinds, a record high for the third year in a row. But the enforcement power is rapidly being eroded and under increasing threat, according to fair housing federal employees. Cases dealing with alleged discrimination based on gender identity have stalled, with staffers afraid to keep working on them until they receive clear instructions on how to interpret terms such as “gender ideology,” referenced in an early executive order from the President.

People often call HUD hotlines to ask about their rights, register a complaint or get help in a crisis. But now they can only do so through an online form, with few exceptions for those with disabilities or who have tech or language barriers. Regional phone lines shut down in March, according to a HUD memo to fair housing staff. The changes were meant to “maximize efficiency and maintain responsiveness through staffing reductions,” the March 10th notice said. But staff members raised concerns that the moves make it harder for people to get help when they need it, including people facing eviction or families without a place to sleep.

More destructive changes are coming. The HUD office that enforces the 1968 Fair Housing Act is expected to be cut by more than 75%. Employees say that will further strain an understaffed office with a hefty case backlog. One employee said that while the Fair Housing Act requires investigations to be completed in 100 days, “we’re lucky if we can meet that goal for 30% of cases.”

“The level of cuts we’ve heard are on the table would effectively end enforcement of the Fair Housing Act in any meaningful sense,” said another HUD fair housing staffer. “The fear within the agency is that the administration’s goal is to gut some of the crowning achievements of the civil rights movement by simply ignoring the laws and refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated to enforce them.”

In late February, HUD and the U.S. DOGE Service abruptly canceled 78 fair housing grants to nonprofits, jeopardizing $30 million in congressionally authorized funds. Four organizations later filed a class-action lawsuit against HUD and DOGE, and in late March, a judge reinstated the funds with a temporary injunction. The Government Accountability Office - an independent watchdog based in the legislative branch - is also investigating the cuts to congressionally earmarked funds. Relief came only after the groups - many of which have small offices and depend on federal grants -faced the prospect of laying people off or closing. Private nonprofits processed 75% of complaints in 2024, and they say that being in communities makes their work to fight discrimination more effective.

“This is evisceration,” said Gail Williams, executive director of Metro Fair Housing Services in Atlanta. “That’s exactly what it is. It’s pretty plain. There’s no cover to it.” When Williams got an email on Feb. 27 saying her organization’s $425,000 enforcement grant was canceled, she knew that would leave 34 pending investigations in limbo. The grant represents 53 percent of the organization’s annual budget. Without it, she could keep the 51-year-old organization open for only three more months. “Most fair housing centers right now are uncertain as to how we will continue,” she said.

Staffers working on fair lending, consumer protection, and other public interest issues at the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) were also put on administrative leave in March. Agency director Bill Pulte rolled out a string of new directives in recent days, including those paring tenant protections and ending programs that help borrowers lacking the traditional 20% cash down payment required to buy a new home.

In the backdrop, a national housing crisis has made it more difficult for people to find affordable places to live. "Record high housing costs are putting the squeeze on families in every part of this country," said former HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, who heads Enterprise Community Partners. He said arbitrary cuts to staff and funding "will only serve to destabilize our housing system and drive up costs for both renters and owners." Many staffers and housing experts say the cuts will indeed make it more difficult for the agencies to carry out basic duties and that it will keep local groups from on-the-ground work. "The shelters are overwhelmed. There's not enough affordable housing," Zoe Ann Olson of the Intermountain Fair Housing Council in Boise, Idaho, said. "We're just seeing an extraordinary amount of evictions, like so many that we're getting on a daily basis. It's so disheartening to lose this money."

There are also fears that the lack of guardrails brings broader economic risk. Fair lending experts noted that many of the mortgages that defaulted during the 2008 housing crisis were predatory and disproportionately affected people of color - risks that can be reduced with proper oversight. Minority borrowers are also more likely to be denied home loans and to pay higher interest rates.

Read the April 6, 2024 Washington Post article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/04/06/fair-housing-enforcement-hud-cuts/

Read the February 14, 2025 NPR article on HUD cuts: https://www.npr.org/2025/02/14/g-s1-49177/hud-employees-are-bracing-for-what-they-hear-will-be-drastic-staff-cuts