Copyright: Brandon Bourdages
On June 9, HUD published an interim final rule and request for comments repealing the Trump Administration’s Preserving Community and Neighborhood Choice (PCNC) regulation that reinstates portions of the Obama Administration’s 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH).
Specifically, the new rule requires that HUD program participants “take meaningful actions that, taken together, address significant disparities in housing needs and in access to opportunity, replacing segregated living patterns with truly integrated and balanced living patterns, transforming racially or ethnically concentrated areas of poverty into areas of opportunity, and fostering and maintaining compliance with civil rights and fair housing laws.”
NMHC has long supported the Fair Housing Act. However, we’ve continued to stress that, although well-intentioned, the Obama-era AFFH regulations actually made it more difficult to develop multifamily housing and further constrained supply—particularly in the underserved communities it aims to help. Having previously weighed in with both the Obama Administration and Trump Administration, NMHC plans to again submit comments that advocate for changes to AFFH that focus on growth, expanding supply, eliminating regulatory burdens and correctly addressing housing affordability in every community.
