Whitey Ford
01-20-2020, 07:07 PM
Persistent housing segregation lies at the root of many of our society’s problems. Trump wants to make it worse.
https://i.imgur.com/zK4jATs.jpg
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.
The proposed Trump Administration rule throws up many technical roadblocks to filing and pursuing such a complaint, but one new procedural hurdle wouldn’t even let the black homeowners get in the door: Before the city would be required to provide a rationale for its failure to keep assessments current, the complainants would have to imagine every conceivable justification that the city might assert, and prove that each was not legitimate, without knowing what actual defense the city might claim or what standard of legitimacy HUD would impose.
Few minority plaintiffs will have the resources to hire the teams of lawyers who can jump through the hoops HUD is erecting, and then to take defendants to court after HUD has dismissed a complaint on spurious procedural grounds.
HUD’s previous rule that the Trump administration proposes to replace defined a policy or practice that has an unlawful disparate impact as one that “creates, increases, reinforces, or perpetuates segregated housing patterns because of race.” The proposed rule eliminates the reference to segregation. This matters because established racial segregation, not ongoing discrimination alone, underlies so many of our most serious social problems, including racial disparities in education, health, criminal justice and wealth that, by the time Congress passed the Fair Housing Act in 1968, had become entrenched nationwide, and persist to this day.
https://archive.is/iZWxn#selection-979.167-979.210
https://i.imgur.com/zK4jATs.jpg
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.
The proposed Trump Administration rule throws up many technical roadblocks to filing and pursuing such a complaint, but one new procedural hurdle wouldn’t even let the black homeowners get in the door: Before the city would be required to provide a rationale for its failure to keep assessments current, the complainants would have to imagine every conceivable justification that the city might assert, and prove that each was not legitimate, without knowing what actual defense the city might claim or what standard of legitimacy HUD would impose.
Few minority plaintiffs will have the resources to hire the teams of lawyers who can jump through the hoops HUD is erecting, and then to take defendants to court after HUD has dismissed a complaint on spurious procedural grounds.
HUD’s previous rule that the Trump administration proposes to replace defined a policy or practice that has an unlawful disparate impact as one that “creates, increases, reinforces, or perpetuates segregated housing patterns because of race.” The proposed rule eliminates the reference to segregation. This matters because established racial segregation, not ongoing discrimination alone, underlies so many of our most serious social problems, including racial disparities in education, health, criminal justice and wealth that, by the time Congress passed the Fair Housing Act in 1968, had become entrenched nationwide, and persist to this day.
https://archive.is/iZWxn#selection-979.167-979.210