HUD Terminates Obama-Era Housing Rule

Decisions related to home building and zoning will now come under the purview of local leaders.

Scott Turner, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, testifies before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 16, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

An Obama-era housing rule that was terminated by the first Trump administration and revived by the Biden administration has again been canceled. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) said the regulation has led to excessive bureaucracy and created affordability challenges.

The agency said it will terminate the Biden-era 2021 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, “cutting costly red tape imposed on localities and returning decision-making power to local and state governments,” in a Feb. 26 statement.

“The Biden-era AFFH rule was, in effect, a ‘zoning tax,’ which fueled an increase in the cost and a decrease in the supply of affordable housing due to restrictions on local land,” the HUD stated.

The AFFH rule, introduced by the Obama administration in 2015, implemented reporting requirements for local and state governments as well as public housing agencies that received federal funds from the HUD.

For instance, it required local officials to provide answers to 92 questions on topics such as disparities in housing opportunities, according to a commentary by The Heritage Foundation. Local officials had to report data on issues such as environmental health hazards, which had little to do with affordable housing. Besides that, HUD fund recipients had to ensure that their policies and practices did not promote racial segregation.

“[The AFFH rule was] designed to give unelected, anonymous bureaucrats in Washington the power to pick and choose who your new next-door neighbor will be,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) wrote in a 2016 op-ed.

“If they don’t believe your neighborhood is ‘diverse’ enough, they will seize control of local zoning decisions—choosing what should be built, where, and who should pay for it—in order to make your neighborhood look more like they want it to.”

In 2020, the Trump administration abolished the AFFH rule, and then-HUD Secretary Ben Carson called the requirements “excessive federal overreach.” The rule proved to be “complicated, costly, and ineffective,” the HUD said at the time.

In 2021, the Biden administration restored the main provisions of the AFFH rule.

With the AFFH rule terminated again, localities will “no longer be required to complete onerous paperwork and drain their budgets to comply with the extreme and restrictive demands made up by the federal government,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said.

“This action also returns decisions on zoning, home building, transportation, and more to local leaders,” he said.

A locality only has to certify that it has “affirmatively furthered fair housing” in accordance with the Fair Housing Act (FHA), the agency said. The FHA prohibits discrimination in housing on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, national origin, familial status, or disability.

“Local and state governments understand the needs of their communities much better than bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. Terminating this rule restores trust in local communities and property owners, while protecting America’s suburbs and neighborhood integrity,” Turner said.

Housing Crisis

Following the HUD announcement, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) issued a statement condemning the decision.

They accused Turner of abandoning the HUD’s “legal obligation to eliminate housing discrimination in the United States.”

“At a time when America is experiencing a full-blown housing crisis and record levels of housing discrimination complaints, this outright assault on civil rights takes us back to the days when the federal government rubber stamped segregation and discrimination,” they alleged.

“He is eliminating a key tool that makes housing more affordable and accessible to everyday people, including people of color, older Americans, veterans, people with disabilities, families with children, and so many others.”

Turner was confirmed to the HUD post by the Senate on Feb. 5 by a vote of 55–44.

During his confirmation hearing in January, Turner discussed his commitment to reduce housing development costs, saying that homelessness in the United States reached an all-time high last year.

“That’s a national embarrassment and something that cannot continue,” Turner said. “We have a housing crisis in our country, where American people and families are struggling every day.”

The recent decision comes after President Donald Trump issued a memorandum on his first day in office about the cost-of-living crisis facing Americans, in which he highlighted the ongoing housing challenge.

Many Americans are unable to buy homes because of high prices, “in part due to regulatory requirements that alone account for 25 percent of the cost of constructing a new home,” the memorandum states while calling on agencies to take appropriate action to lower the cost of housing and expand housing supply.