Enterprise: Community Developments: New Reports on Fair Housing Trends + Causes and Consequences of Gentrification

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• The National Fair Housing Alliance has released its 2018 fair housing trends report, Making Every Neighborhood a Place of Opportunity, which outlines key obstacles to achieving the goals of the Fair Housing Act. The report shows that there were 28,843 complaints of housing discrimination last year, noting that the three most common types of complaints were based on disability (57 percent), race (19 percent) and family status (9 percent). It suggests that the biggest obstacle to fair housing rights is the federal government's failure to enforce the law vigorously, pointing out that earlier this year HUD suspended the deadline for local governments that receive HUD funding to submit an Assessment of Fair Housing (AFH) - an examination of the local housing landscape that helps jurisdictions set their fair housing priorities and goals - until the next AFH submission date that falls after October 31, 2020. In addition, last year the Treasury Department issued a report that recommended HUD reconsider its use of the disparate impact rule - which allows holding housing lenders and providers liable for seemingly neutral practices that have a discriminatory effect on classes of persons protected under the Fair Housing Act. (FHA, May 2018) HUD has recently announced that it will formally seek public comment on whether its 2013 Disparate Impact Regulation is consistent with the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that established that the Fair Housing Act allows lawsuits based on disparate impact.
  
• HUD has released a report that reviews the recent research on the causes and consequences of gentrification and identifies key steps policymakers can take to foster neighborhood change that is both inclusive and equitable. The report, which is in response to the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations' request for the agency to examine the effects of rapidly rising rents in urban areas across the nation and ways to avoid displacement of lower-income families and long-term residents, suggests four key strategies : preserving existing affordable housing; encouraging greater housing development, including but not limited to affordable housing; engaging existing community residents; and using regional strategies. (HUD, May 2018)