In July 2015, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro came to Chicago and announced the agency’s renewed commitment to “affirmatively furthering” fair housing. The requirement that its grantees not spend federal dollars on discriminatory housing practices, and indeed that its grant recipients work toward reversing the effects of federally-subsidized housing segregation, was spelled out in the 1968 Fair Housing Act. For decades after the law was passed, however, it was unclear what it meant, exactly, to “affirmatively further fair housing.” And in practice HUD didn’t do much to hold its grantees, including the Chicago Housing Authority, accountable for upholding this aspect of the law. But as Castro addressed Chicago, it was clear that the Obama administration now wanted to take the CHA to task. It and other agencies would have to collect data and regularly report their progress on furthering fair housing in order to continue receiving federal funds.
Created by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, HUD has wielded significant influence over the residential landscape of American cities by funding public housing construction and rental assistance vouchers (Section 8). Although Johnson wanted HUD to combat residential segregation, historically the agency has failed to exert meaningful pressure against racist local housing policies. In Chicago, HUD money was used to build public housing in segregated neighborhoods and to sort its residents by race until the 1970s. In later decades, as money for public housing construction dried up and vouchers became the preferred way to subsidize housing, HUD dollars essentially went from funding segregation in public housing to funding segregation in the private market.
Thus, for the last 16 years, under both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, HUD leadership hasn’t made much difference in the facts on the ground in Chicago. The stock of public housing has decreased, renters relying on vouchers continue to live mostly in poor, black neighborhoods, and the CHA has steadily withdrawn from its role as the city’s largest landlord to being, essentially, a middleman between the federal government and local private developers and landlords.
“The nightmarish world I fear we will be in as a coalition is that the sanctuary city issue will be used to hold up federal funding from HUD,” says Leah Levinger, executive director of the Chicago Housing Initiative, which brings together housing organizers across the generational and racial spectrum. “There’s a real fear that all of the coalition-building of groups oppressed differently in this world will fracture.”
If Trump doesn’t intend to destroy HUD, Carson’s lack of expertise could be tempered by more knowledgeable political appointees below him—such as the assistant secretary for public and Indian housing—according to Lawrence Vale, a professor of urban design and planning at MIT. And below them, “there is still a strong cadre of career employees,” Vale says.
