The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has a plan to help integrate communities across the nation as housing policies have been ineffective at creating "the kind of communities the agency had hoped for," according to U.S. News & World Report. Many neighborhoods are racially imbalanced or lean too much toward the rich or poor, the report says.
The proposed federal rule, called "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing," is currently under a 60-day public comment period. Though details of how the policy would specifically work are unclear, the rule says HUD would provide states, local governments and others who receive agency money with data and a geospatial tool to look at "patterns of integration and segregation; racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty; access to education, employment, low-poverty, transportation, and environmental health."
States would then assess the best way to integrate communities deemed by HUD's data to not be integrated enough. A HUD official, who did not want to speak on record because of the public comment period, said the rule hopes to better match up HUD-assisted housing with the communities that have good hospitals, schools and other assets.
Read more at U.S. News & World Report.