Continuing his legacy of desecrating the highest office in the land and undoing all of former President Obama’s good work, the Trump administration is looking to change rules enacted to fight housing discrimination.
Which makes sense if you consider that, in 1973, Trump and his father were sued by the Department of Justice for violating the Fair Housing Act. Federal officials found that the Trumps would lie to black applicants, claiming that apartments weren’t available for rent when they were. Because Trump believes all black people are on welfare, he claimed the DOJ was merely trying to get him to rent to welfare recipients. Trump was so racist that he was forced to sign an agreement noting that he would not discriminate against black renters.
Because the president is petty AF and because the Department of Housing and Urban Development is run by a former neurosurgeon who technically can’t operate his own brain, the Trump administration and HUD are “completing a regulation scaling back a rule that combats discrimination even when it’s unintended—such as banking lenders’ use of algorithms that disproportionately reject applicants of color,” Business Insider reports.
What’s even more hilarious (and I totally mean hilarious in a stubbing-your-toe-twice-on-the-same-bed-frame kind of way) is that the president—who withheld Ukrainian aid in exchange for inquiries into political rival former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter—wants to undo a rule that allowed federal funding to be withheld from “cities and municipalities that fail to confront segregation.”
“The proposed rule entirely ignores the essential racial desegregation obligations of fair housing law,” Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, told the Washington Post.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development did not respond to Business Insider requests for comment. Or, maybe Ben Carson did speak to someone and they couldn’t hear him because he talks like he’s doing an ASMR video about ASMR videos.
The Trump administration knows that by making these changes, they would be undoing decades of progress made towards ensuring that people of color have a place to live but they just don’t care. Shaun Donovan, the former HUD secretary for the Obama administration penned an op-ed for the New York Times and called the move, “reckless and wrong.” Because Trump views himself as an honorary member of the Hell’s Angels sans the motorcycle, he sees the term “reckless and wrong” as endearing.
From Business Insider:
Starting in 2015, local governments were required to collect data to better track patterns of neighborhood development and segregation to obtain federal housing funds.
Ben Carson, the current HUD secretary, though, said in late 2018 that the rule was “actually suffocating investment in some of our most distressed neighborhoods that need our investment the most” instead of expanding affordable housing options as it was designed to do.
Carson has also staunchly criticized federal efforts to desegregate neighborhoods for many years, calling it “failed socialist experiments.” His department beat back an advocate-led lawsuit charging him with dismantling the Fair Housing Act in 2018.
As if the proposed changes weren’t enough, the Trump administration also has two regulators looking into a 1977 law that encourages banks to invest in low-income neighborhoods. Those opposed to this change have argued that this could lead the way for construction in black neighborhoods that don’t serve local residents like just about every NFL stadium ever built.
When asked about the changes, Trump reportedly laughed from his belly and then bit the head off a live bat and spit it a reporter only to ask for his bat head back so that he could finish eating it.