HUD Secretary Ben Carson assured members of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee three weeks ago that he and HUD are committed to enforcing Fair Housing laws. He asked anyone to give him examples of fair housing violations that HUD had ignored.
In response to a question from Representative William Clay, Secretary Carson testified,
I told the leaders of the Low [Income] Housing Coalition that I was willing to work with them, talk to them on how we could better address any of the discriminatory practices they’ve found. And, I also offered to them and I’d offer to anybody, if you find some real discriminatory issues going on, the kind of things HUD has neglected in the past, we want to know about them. We’ll be on ’em like white on rice.
Here you go Mr. Secretary. The following violations are links to details of Fair Housing violations that we have previously pointed out to HUD and the public:
- Please start by investigating HUD’s own discriminatory practices in failing to enforce the Fair Housing Act.
- Investigate the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs for violating the Fair Housing Act by concentrating Low Income Housing Tax Credits in racially segregated, high-poverty and dangerous neighborhoods.
- Investigate ongoing racial discrimination using HUD and local funds by the City of Lubbock in it’s treatment of the city’s African-American residents.
- Investigate discriminatory treatment of the majority-minority city of Port Arthur, Texas in the HUD funded Hurricane Harvey disaster recovery program administered by the State of Texas.
- Investigate the disparate impact on people of color and renters in the State of Texas allocation of $5 billion in CDBG disaster recovery funds.
- Investigate actions by Fort Worth suburban residents directed at blocking African-American persons from moving into their communities.
- Investigate the disparate impact on African-American and Hispanic disaster survivors resulting from FEMA’s policy of denying them disaster recovery assistance because of the pre-storm condition of their homes.
- Investigate the City of Houston’s ongoing policy of segregating low income HUD-assisted and Low Income Housing Tax Credit funded housing in neighborhoods of color.
- Investigate the City of Houston’s forced segregation of public housing.
- Investigate the unlawful actions of local and county government that maintains the segregation of foreign born persons in colonias in the Texas Rio Grande Valley.
- Investigate the hyper racial segregation of Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher holders in Houston and the failure to overcome that segregation as required in HUD regulations.
- Investigate the racial segregation of African Americans by the City and Housing Authority of Corpus Christi.
- Investigate the State of Texas’ discrimination against housing choice voucher holders by the Texas Legislature and Texas governor’s action to outlaw the enforcement of source of income fair housing laws by local units of government.
- Investigate the failure of the City of Houston to enforce its building code and habitability standards in apartment developments primarily housing low-income people of color.
- Investigate the failure of the State of Texas to honor its voluntary Fair Housing Conciliation Agreement to rebuild the public housing demolished following hurricane Ike ten years ago.
- Investigate the GAO’s findings about actions of Texas local and state political officials that result in racial segregation of affordable housing developments.
- Investigate the Beaumont Housing Authority’s rejection of millions in disaster recovery funds to rebuild the authority’s first public housing development in a racially integrated, high opportunity neighborhood.
