A federal judge has blocked the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from changing a federal grant program designed to fund housing discrimination investigations conducted by more than 100 nonprofit organizations.
Reuters reports US District Judge Myong Joun, a Biden appointee, chided HUD for not providing an adequate explanation for its attempt to implement “sweeping changes” to the nearly 40-year-old Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP).
The National Fair Housing Alliance and the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center sued HUD in July to block the changes after the department refused to allocate its congressionally appropriated funding for the 2025 fiscal year for the program, which typically awarded over 100 grants ranging from $75,000 to $425,000. Instead, HUD sought to redirect $46 million of the $56 million that Congress had appropriated for just five grants, $25 million of which would go to a law school and the remaining $10 million going to a state or local agency.
“The effect of HUD’s restructure effectively bars the very housing organizations that have been effectuating FHIP’s mission year after year since its enactment,” Joun said.
Lisa Rice, president and CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance, welcomed the ruling.
“When someone is wrongfully turned away from a housing opportunity because they have experienced domestic violence, because of a disability, their gender, or the color of their skin, they don’t call Washington,” she said. “They call the fair housing organization in their community. HUD tried to shut the doors of the frontline groups who fight housing injustice and today a federal court emphatically said ‘no,’” said “This ruling means the people who answer that call are still going to be there to answer it and serve people desperately seeking protection from unlawful housing discrimination.”
HUD did not issue a public comment on the ruling.
0 Comments