Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing

Affirmatively furthering fair housing is an executive order issued by Barack Obama pursuant to the Fair Housing Act. It requires cities and towns which receive Federal money to examine their housing patterns and look for racial bias. The intention is to promote racial integration, particularly in cities such as Chicago and Baltimore, which have neighborhoods with a high preponderance of African-American residents. Civil rights groups have hailed the rule, while conservatives have decried it as "social engineering."

Mechanism

Under the rule, any jurisdiction that receives money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) must analyze its housing occupancy by race, class, English proficiency, and other categories. It must then analyze factors which contribute to any imbalance, and formulate a plan to remedy the imbalance. The plan can be approved or disapproved by HUD. This is done at both the local and regional level. For example, a major city, such as Chicago, will have to analyze any racial disparities within Chicago, and Chicago suburbs will analyze their own racial disparities. In addition, Chicago and the suburbs will have to analyze any disparities as compared with each other. Thereafter, the community has to track progress (or lack thereof). The planning cycle will be repeated every five years. If the Federal Government is not satisfied with a community's efforts to reduce disparities, then under the disparate impact doctrine, this could be considered illegal discrimination. As a result, federal funds could be withheld, or the community could be sued, using the racial disparity statistics as evidence.

External links

• final rule