Trump Administration is Trying to Make it Easier for Banks to Reject Loans to People of Color

The Trump administration is trying to reverse the Obama-era rules that helped fight racial discrimination in housing. The administration is also aiming at a federal law that helped desegregate American neighborhoods for over 50 years known as the Fair Housing Act.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has taken steps to reverse rules that bar banking lenders from discriminating against people of color, intentionally or unintentionally.

They are also proposing to eliminate a rule that withholds federal funding to cities that fail to confront segregation. 

“The proposed rule entirely ignores the essential racial desegregation obligations of fair housing law,” Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, told The Washington Post.

Ben Carson, the current HUD secretary, said in late 2018 that the rule was “actually suffocating investment in some of our most distressed neighborhoods that need our investment the most” instead of expanding affordable housing options as it was designed to do.

The Trump administration has also appointed two regulators to overhaul a 1977 law that compels banks to invest in low-income neighborhoods and help transform them into areas of economic opportunity.

Civil rights advocates argue that rolling back these policies will undo decades of progress in decreasing discrimination.