Archinect - News

HUD is committing $365 million to help prevent homeless encampments. Will it be enough?

2022-06-22T18:27:00-04:00

In an effort to halt the actions of different major cities to sweep away homeless encampments in recent years, the federal government is now taking direct action in the form of two expanded grant programs it says have become necessary in the face of rising inflation and untenable rental markets.

Bloomberg is reporting that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has earmarked some $365 million worth of funding aimed directly at the country’s unhoused population it says currently numbers more than 550,000.

The funding is going to be provided through an expansion of HUD’s Continuum of Care (CoC) grant program and a new round of housing choice vouchers which add up to $43 million. It represents the first time that the agency has dedicated monies to directly aid those who are without shelter, and will address the related issue of rural homelessness with a special earmark of $54.5 million.

Previously on Archinect: A homeless encampment is growing on Apple's future N...

U.S. residential construction is accelerating, but not all regions are feeling it

2021-07-21T13:48:00-04:00

Residential construction in the United States is accelerating, despite the high costs of materials caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new data released by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Within their report, which focuses on new residential construction in June 2021, the government bodies noted that housing permit authorizations, housing starts, housing under construction, and housing units completed, are all significantly higher than June 2020.

The report notes that last month, almost 1.6 million housing units were authorized with permits, marking a 5% decrease on the month previous, but a 23% increase on the number of permits issued in June 2020. Meanwhile, over 1.64 million housing units started the construction process last month, an increase of 6% from May, and a 29% increase on June 2020.

Overall, there was a 14% increase in the number of housing units under construction in June 2021 versus June 2020, markin...

President Biden takes executive steps to undo discriminatory housing policies

2021-01-28T14:15:00-05:00

President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Jan. 27 directing his administration to end policies that enable discrimination in housing and lending, and acknowledging the federal government’s role in erecting systemic barriers to fair housing.

According to Kriston Capps, writing for Bloomberg CityLab, "Biden’s executive order tasked the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to review two key rules implemented under the Trump administration. One of those rules governs how cities assess and enforce efforts to reduce segregation, a Civil Rights-era mandate that Trump repeatedly mischaracterized as an attempt to 'abolish the suburbs.' The other rule polices discrimination in rental housing and mortgage lending, standards that were relaxed under former Housing Secretary Ben Carson."

Trump administration terminates Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule

2020-07-23T18:29:00-04:00

United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson has finalized a plan to dismantle the Obama-era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation that sought to rectify entrenched racial and economic segregation in American suburbs.

The AFH ruling was crafted during the administration of Barack Obama as part of an effort to more effectively enforce the 1968 Fair Housing Act legislation. The AFH rule required suburbs to plan for addressing segregation at risk of losing key HUD funding and was meant to support wider desegregation efforts.

The latest directive, long in the making, relieves municipalities of their duty to address patterns of segregation within their boundaries and is being effectively replaced with a new directive titled Preserving Community and Neighborhood Choice, a rule that grants municipalities much more leeway in meeting softened AFH guidelines. The shift represents the latest aspect of a life-long effort by President Don...

Former HUD secretary Shaun Donovan is running for mayor of New York City

2020-02-10T13:15:00-05:00

Shaun Donovan, the former Secretary for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Barack Obama, has filed papers to run for mayor of New York City in the upcoming 2021 election.

Donovan is vying to succeed current New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has served two terms as the city's mayor.

Donovan, The New York Times reports, is a native New Yorker who served as HUD Secretary between 2009 and 2014, a period that includes the aftermath and recovery from Superstorm Sandy. Donovan also served as a deputy assistant HUD secretary under President Bill Clinton and as the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Donovan's tenure at HUD followed that of Julian Castro, who himself recently ran for higher office as a Democratic presidential contender.

In a statement published by The New York Times, Donovan writes, “As a lifelong New Yorker, I've committed my life to public service and focused on ...

HUD continues to whittle away at the Fair Housing Act

2020-01-21T16:24:00-05:00

The Fair Housing Act [...] prohibits not only intentional segregation, but also policies and practices whose effect is to discriminate for no defensible reason, even if there is no evidence of a racial motive. Lawyers describe such actions as having a “disparate impact” on minorities. Now, however, the Trump administration is about to put into effect procedures to make it virtually impossible to prove disparate impact, no matter how egregious a discriminatory policy or practice may be.

Richard Rothstein, author of the influential book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, presents an opinion piece in The New York Times highlighting the latest multi-pronged efforts on the part of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to dismantle the effectiveness and legal significance of the Fair Housing Act under the administration of President Donald Trump.

The latest efforts aim to make filing lawsuits arguing that policies and practices generate acts of de-facto racial segregation more difficult and onerous.

Trump administration to help L.A. homelessness efforts. But there's a catch

2020-01-17T11:29:00-05:00

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson told Mayor Eric Garcetti in a letter last Thursday that Trump officials are prepared to offer Los Angeles an array of resources, including emergency healthcare services and federal land. However, Carson also suggested in his letter that the government expects changes from L.A. in how it manages homelessness...he wrote, “the city and county of Los Angeles must partner with our efforts and make necessary policy changes.”

The offer follows recent talks between senior Trump administration officials, Mayor Garcetti and Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, reports the Los Angeles Times. It includes potential provision of emergency healthcare services, supplemental emergency shelters and transitional housing, federal land, assistance for law enforcement and "voucher utilization support," writes Times reporters Dakota Smith, Benjamin Oreskes, and Noah Bierman. Moreover, Carson outlined a number of stipulations, including reallocating funding, "empowering and utilizing local law enforcement," and reducing regulations to expedite the construction of affordable housing.

Federal government takes another step away from "affirmatively furthering fair housing"

2020-01-13T14:14:00-05:00

The history of housing discrimination in this country is in significant part a history of deliberate government policy, not market forces or individual choice. Ghettos such as those in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Baltimore, in fact, reflect federal policies of the mid-20th century that made segregation a condition for federal support of various kinds. That was social engineering of the most shameful sort.

The Washington Post editorial board sounds off on a recent plan advanced by United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson that seeks to further weaken Obama-era "affirmatively furthering fair housing" regulations.

According to the editorial, the wording of the 2015 ruling has been changed by Carson to shift its focus from advancing "meaningful actions" to "replac[e] segregated living patterns with truly integrated and balanced living patterns," according to The Washington Post, with a new focus on "advancing fair housing choice within the program participant’s control or influence."

The change is one of many recent retreats on the part of the current presidential administration aimed at reversing progressive housing reforms enacted before 2016.

Section 8 voucher discrimination will be illegal in California starting January 1

2019-12-31T19:36:00-05:00

“No Section 8.” You’ll find those words on rental listings across the country. Landlords use them to deter people who rely on the federal Housing Choice Voucher Program, formerly known as Section 8, from applying for their units. Starting in January, a new California law will make that discrimination illegal.

A new law is slated to take effect in California on January 1, 2020 that will prevent landlords in the state from discriminating against federal housing voucher recipients.

The measure caps off a better-than-average year for tenants rights activists across the country—at the local level, at least—in America’s major cities that includes the passage of significant new rent control ordinances in New York State. In addition, at the national level, a slate of rent control and pro-public hosing initiatives have also shined a light on several facets of the ongoing struggles to reign in housing costs across the country.

Julián Castro unveils national lead abatement plan

2019-06-13T14:32:00-04:00

In response to the ongoing toxicity crisis gripping the town of Flint, Michigan, 2020 Democratic presidential contender Julián Castro has unveiled a nationwide lead abatement plan.

Last week, Castro, former Housing and Urban Development secretary under President Barack Obama, became the first presidential candidate to visit the ailing town, where a slow-motion environmental disaster has been playing out since 2014.

(For a thorough breakdown of the Flint water crisis, see this informational story from CNN.)

Castro proposes to establish a presidential task force on lead “charged with eliminating lead poisoning as a major public health threat” while asking Congress to allocate $5 billion per year for a decade to replace lead pipes around the country. The funding would also go toward abating lead contamination in household paint and in soil "in areas of highest need." In addition, the plan would allocate $100 million per year toward lead poising prevention efforts. Castro told BuzzFee...

HUD planning to allow anti-trans discrimination in homeless shelters

2019-05-24T14:51:00-04:00

The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is moving to allow federally-funded homeless shelters to deny people admission based on their gender identity.

A proposed HUD rule will allow federally-funded shelters to establish policies “consistent with state and local law” with regards to how shelters “consider an individual’s sex” when they are being admitted by facilities where people are placed into same-sex or gender-segregated accommodations. The ruling will also allow shelters to use a range of factors in making gender determinations, including “privacy, safety, practical concerns, religious beliefs, any relevant considerations under civil rights and nondiscrimination authorities, the individual’s sex as reflected in official government documents, as well as the gender which a person identifies with.”

According to LGBTQ advocates, the proposed rule will effectively gut the Obama-era Equal Access Rule, a 2012 directive that sought to “ensure core [HUD] pr...

Ben Carson recommends raising rents for low-income Americans receiving rental assistance

2018-04-26T14:45:00-04:00

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has announced a proposal to raise rents for low-income Americans relying on federal housing subsidies.

Currently, families and individuals living in subsidized housing are traditionally asked to spend 30% of their adjusted income on rent, with a cap on rent for the program's lowest earners at $50 per month. According to the Washington Post, Carson's new initiative would raise the standard for tenants to 35% of their gross incomes, with the cap on rent for the poorest families rising to $150 a month.

Though the 30-percent rule for measuring affordability has long been accepted as the standard rule of thumb, for families at lower income brackets, even this percentage is way too high when factoring in other necessary expenses as well as the need to save for emergencies. Increasing this by 5% would put further strain on millions of households already burdened by our current system, and would likely force many into homelessness.

In addit...

HUD announces delay of AFFH, an Obama-era rule combating housing segregation

2018-01-08T14:24:00-05:00

Last week, HUD published a notice in the Federal Register announcing its intentions to suspend enforcement of the rule until 2020, the New York Times reports. The notice “tells cities already at work on the detailed plans required by the rule that they no longer need to submit them, and the department says it will stop reviewing plans that have already been filed,” according to the paper.

In 2015, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, under the Obama administration, issued legislation intended to bolster the enforcement of the Fair Housing Act, a decades-old law designed to combat segregation across the country. The new, Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, required cities and towns that receive federal funding to examine their local housing patterns for racial bias and to design a plan to address any measurable bias.

However, HUD announced last week, issuing a notice, that it is will be suspending enforcement of the AFFH, now giving cities until 2020 to submit their evaluations. The notice also states that the department will stop reviewing plans that have already been filed by cities.

While the decision does not necessarily repeal the Obama-era legislation, fair housing experts believe the suspension effectively guts the ruling and significantly waters down the government's assessment tools for fair housing by delaying enforcement. Communiti...

A look at the alarmingly long wait times for Section 8 housing in U.S. cities

2018-01-04T13:59:00-05:00

Stacker was one of 188,000 people who applied for 20,000 spots in the voucher waiting line for the Housing Authority of the city of Los Angeles. And that line won’t be moving quickly. The Housing Authority’s Section 8 director, Carlos VanNatter, said only about 200 vouchers become available here every month, basically when a pay raise makes someone ineligible or someone dies.

While the national average wait time for Section 8 vouchers is currently more than two years (with nearly half of all housing authorities having closed their lists to new applicants), the situation in big cities like New York and Los Angeles is so dire that residents have to apply for a coveted spot on the waiting list via a lottery held every few years. And there's no sign of easing: "President Donald Trump's proposed 2018 budget would slash more than $6 billion from the U.S. Housing office, or HUD, which funds Section 8," Marketplace reports.

"Dismantling of the administrative state" under Ben Carson

2017-08-24T13:23:00-04:00

HUD has emerged as the perfect distillation of the right’s antipathy to governing. If the great radical-conservative dream was, in Grover Norquist’s famous words, to “drown government in a bathtub,” then this was what the final gasps of one department might look like.

In his new piece for New York Magazine, Alec MacGillis examines Ben Carson's turbulent and confusing time at HUD. He describes in detail, the situation at the headquarters, the Trump Cuts, and the secretary's July trip to Baltimore.

He had been chosen for a job he had few qualifications for by a man who had few obvious qualifications for his own job, and he was now being left to his own devices to defend the dismantling of the department he was supposed to run, with an underpopulated corps of deputies at his side.

HUD has long been something of an overlooked stepchild within the federal government. Founded in 1965 in a burst of Great Society resolve to confront the “urban crisis,” it has seen its manpower slide by more than half since the Reagan Revolution. (The HUD headquarters is now so eerily underpopulated that it can’t even support a cafeteria; it sits vacant on the first floor.) But HUD still serves a function that millions of low-income Americans depend on — it funds 3,300 p...

Trump appoints his "event planner" as a head of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Region II

2017-06-16T17:55:00-04:00

President Trump has reportedly appointed a longtime Trump family supporter and event planner with no housing experience to oversee federal housing programs in New York. Lynne Patton will lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) region that oversees New York and New Jersey, the New York Daily News reported Thursday.

Appointed on Wednesday, Lynne Patton, has zero experience in housing, and is now in charge of running the office that oversees federal housing programs in New York.

Patton falsely claims to have a law degree from Quinnipiac University School of Law in Connecticut. Yale University is also listed on her LinkedIn profile with no official explanation.

Her relationship with Trump family began in 2009 when she became responsible for arranging tournaments at Trump golf courses. Patton later served as the liaison to the Trump family during his presidential campaign, arranged Eric Trump’s wedding and helped run the Eric Trump Foundation, a charity that's now under investigation.

Poverty is "a state of mind," states HUD Secretary Ben Carson

2017-05-25T17:36:00-04:00

Poverty is largely “a state of mind”, housing secretary Ben Carson has claimed, dismaying observers who had modest hopes for his tenure. Carson, the neurosurgeon who heads the agency charged with helping low-income Americans gain access to affordable housing, told Sirius XM radio: “You take somebody who has the right mindset, you can take everything from them and put them on the street, and I guarantee in a little while they’ll be right back up there.”

"And you take somebody with the wrong mindset, you can give them everything in the world, they’ll work their way back down to the bottom," Carson continued. The remarks were widely condemned by experts on poverty and homelessness.

As the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Carson is in charge of providing affordable and public housing to the disenfranchised. According to almost universal consensus by experts, poverty is not a choice, but rather a condition attributable to a range of a factors, from where you were born to the color of your skin to bad luck.

Most Americans will live below the poverty line at some point in their life, research by the US government has discovered. In 2015, 13.5% (43.1 million) Americans lived in poverty. This far exceeds most other wealthy countries. And, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, "the United States has the greatest share of renters (28.5%) who are severely cost burdened, spending more than half of t...

HUD head Ben Carson thinks creature comforts are not for those on Section 8

2017-05-09T13:22:00-04:00

As he toured facilities for the poor in Ohio last week, Mr. Carson, the neurosurgeon-turned-housing secretary, joked that a relatively well-appointed apartment complex for veterans lacked “only pool tables.” He inquired at one stop whether animals were allowed. At yet another, he nodded, plainly happy, as officials explained how they had stacked dozens of bunk beds inside a homeless shelter and purposefully did not provide televisions.

In a recent visit to a public housing facility in Columbus, Ohio, HUD head Ben Carson reiterated his stance that anyone receiving Section 8 housing vouchers or federal assistance should not get too comfortable, as this would lead them to simply want to stay in their federally provided digs. Ironically, studies have shown that for the chronic homeless population, remaining in one place is actually much cheaper for the state than having them constantly bouncing between shelters and the street once emergency room visits and legal fees are added into the mix. Carson did make allowances for those who are mentally ill or unable to provide for themselves, but in his view there is to be no rest for who he defines as the able-bodied.

Ben Carson gets stuck in an elevator during a tour of a public housing complex

2017-04-12T12:24:00-04:00

With limited funds, many American affordable housing projects aren’t in great shape. Their fate is ever more tenuous with the impending budget cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed by the Trump Administration. In an ironic twist of fate, the often-sorry state of affordable housing was brought to the attention of the controversial new secretary of the HUD, Ben Carson, when he and his wife were trapped in an elevator at a Miami public complex on Wednesday, as reported by the Miami Herald. The couple were stuck for a full fifteen minutes before firefighters freed them.

Neurosurgeon Ben Carson officially confirmed to run HUD

2017-03-02T13:09:00-05:00

Urban policy experts and progressive activists have expressed intense concern that Carson, in keeping with his strong conservative positions, will seek to cut money for government assistance programs and wear down the social safety net. The Trump administration has recently signaled that many government agencies can expect budget reductions in favor of increasing defense spending.

Realizing the latent dream of every neurosurgeon to one day run the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson has been officially confirmed by the U.S. Senate to start operating on the HUD. Although his plans for the agency are vague, Carson has spoken of being against granting "extra rights" to any community.

Senator Elizabeth Warren voted to support Carson's confirmation in committee before voting against his actual confirmation, explaining in a written statement that "Dr. Carson’s answers weren’t perfect. But at his hearing, he committed to track and report on conflicts of interest at the agency. If President Trump goes to his second choice, I don’t think we will get another HUD nominee who will even make these promises — much less follow through on them.”

A HUD official has been fired for criticizing Trump

2017-02-17T18:13:00-05:00

A top aide to President Trump’s housing secretary nominee, Ben Carson, was fired and led out of the department’s headquarters by security on Wednesday after writings critical of Mr. Trump surfaced in his vetting, according to two people briefed on the matter. Shermichael Singleton, who was one of the few black conservatives in the Trump administration, had been working at the Department of Housing and Urban Development since Jan. 23 as a senior adviser.

“My party in particular has allowed itself to be taken over by someone who claims to be a Republican but doesn’t represent any of our values, principles or traditions,” wrote Shermichael in The Hill in October of last year.

^ Take a listen to a recent Archinect Sessions episode with our guest Emily Hunt Turner as she talks about her experience working at HUD as a lawyer.

Trump begins presidency by increasing taxes for (middle-class) homebuyers

2017-01-20T19:11:00-05:00

IN ONE OF the first official acts of his presidency, Donald Trump has increased taxes on a million middle-class homebuyers. The Department of Housing and Urban Development on Friday reversed a scheduled 0.25 percent cut in mortgage insurance premiums issued by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). For a mortgage worth $200,000, this adds $500 to a homebuyer’s annual costs. These insurance fees are effectively a tax on middle-class homeownership.

Don’t want Ben Carson to become Secretary of HUD? Sign this letter

2017-01-09T14:32:00-05:00

A growing list of urban planners, designers, architects, and scholars are putting their weight behind a petition intended to prevent Dr. Ben Carson from becoming the next Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). He has no prior experience with housing and holds widely-unpopular positions on public housing and other issues. For instance, Carson has described the Fair Housing Act as “socialist”, suggesting he would not enforce it.

Here's how the letter, which is still being edited and written collaboratively, begins:

We, the undersigned, are strongly opposed to the appointment of Dr. Ben Carson as the next Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Apart from his personal views on a variety of political and social issues, we consider Dr. Carson completely unqualified to anticipate or promote appropriate solutions to the pressing housing and urban needs facing our country.

Created in 1965 to further the nation’s housing and urban...

5 housing experts offer opinions about Ben Carson's direction as HUD head

2016-12-06T14:09:00-05:00

What are the likely policy goals of a neurosurgeon appointed secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development by a man who can't stop disappointedly tweeting at Alec Baldwin? "There’s not a dearth of qualified Republicans for that job, so if you choose somebody with no background in housing, it says something about your priorities,” says Julia Gordon, executive vice president of the National Community Stabilization Trust, according to an article in NextCity. Various other housing experts, including Barbara Sard and Benjamin Dulchin, voiced concern about the man with no actual federal housing experience, although former HUD official Maurice Jones was cautiously optimistic, saying that "whatever agenda or whatever priority they have, I look forward to learning what that is." The article goes on to note that:

"a Washington Times op-ed by Ben Carson published in July 2015 indicates that he either does not understand or does not support the AFFH rule [Affirmatively Furtherin...

HUD-winked: Ben Carson takes on housing for Trump and ZHA distances itself from Patrik Schumacher on Archinect Sessions #90, ft. special guest Marc Miller

2016-12-01T15:46:00-05:00

When president-elect Donald Trump nominated Ben Carson to lead the department of Housing and Urban Development, the response was resoundingly: huh?

The neurosurgeon came onto the national political scene in 2015, during his run for the Republican nomination, but after Trump took the presidency and started throwing around the idea of offering a Cabinet position to Carson, a spokesperson said "Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he's never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency." Despite all that, Carson is now (almost definitely officially) secretary of HUD (which he knows just enough about to seriously backtrack the agency's work as pushed by Obama). So here we are.

Special guest Marc Miller joins us on the podcast to discuss the implications of Carson's inexperience for HUD, as well as chew on the latest Schumacher-induced controversy: when the architect promoted the privatization of public space an...

What Ben Carson's federal inexperience means for HUD

2016-11-30T16:08:00-05:00

If Carson wants to dramatically change the nature of HUD, all he needs to do is nothing — a course of action he seems temperamentally inclined to accept. Under Carson, HUD could stop enforcement of that "socialist" Fair Housing Act. It could stop prodding local governments to increase access to homes. It could look the other way when local ordinances sequester government-mandated affordable housing away from those with enough pull to say "not in my backyard."

Related on Archinect:

President-elect Trump offers HUD post to Ben Carson

2016-11-23T13:19:00-05:00

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has offered the post of secretary of housing and urban development to former presidential candidate Ben Carson, who will consider it over the Thanksgiving holiday, a Carson spokesman said on Tuesday. "The president-elected asked him to consider it and he's considering it," Carson spokesman Armstrong Williams said. Carson, a retired surgeon, dropped out of the 2016 presidential race in March and backed Trump.

More on the US Department of Housing and Urban Development:

Homelessness decreased this year in the US, but increased in cities including LA

2016-11-21T13:40:00-05:00

Accurately tracking a population that has no permanent home has always been a challenge for those who attempt to put together figures on homelessness. Many studies elect to count transients one night each year in order to create some form of consistency. Using that method, a study by the Department of Housing and Urban Development reports that figures for homelessness seem to down overall across the nation as of January 2016, while certain cities such as Los Angeles and Washington D.C. have experienced significant upticks. As NPR explains:

"But some areas bucked the trend. Washington, D.C., saw a 14.4 percent increase in homelessness, over 1,000 more people, and there were an additional 2,680 homeless people in Los Angeles County, an increase of 6.5 percent. The Dallas and Seattle areas also had big increases, 21.3 and 6.0 percent, respectively."

For more on homelessness:

Turning down tenants because of criminal records may be discrimination, says HUD

2016-04-04T17:36:00-04:00

In new guidance, released Monday, HUD tells landlords and home sellers that turning down tenants or buyers based on their criminal records may violate the Fair Housing Act. People with criminal records aren't a protected class under the Fair Housing Act... but blanket policies of refusing to rent to anybody with a criminal record are de facto discrimination, the department says — because of the systemic disparities of the American criminal justice system.

"Because of widespread racial and ethnic disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system, criminal history-based restrictions on access to housing are likely disproportionately to burden African-Americans and Hispanics." - New HUD guidance on criminal records and the Fair Housing Act

For related coverage, check out these links: