Fair housing groups are celebrating a judge’s Wednesday ruling that stopped a federal agency’s effort to cut funding to programs intended to improve equal housing opportunity in the U.S.
Judge Myong J. Joun granted a temporary restraining order requiring the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to issue money to dozens of fair housing entities.
The lawsuit was filed shortly after HUD moved last month to halt funding to private fair housing enforcement initiatives through the Fair Housing Incentives Program (FHIP).
“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 wrote. “In addition to that restructuring, HUD now also attempts to insert unrelated conditions — such as gender ideology beliefs, immigration stances and faith-based language — into its grant agreements.”
HUD characterized the changes as a modernization effort, which the judge said “does not add up.”
“This pithy description falls woefully short of the mark in both form and substance,” the judge wrote in the order. “Given the lack of informed reasoning or explanation justifying these sweeping changes, Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their arbitrary and capricious claim and will face irreparable harm should HUD’s FY2025 funding structure take effect. The balance of the equities and the public interest likewise tip in Plaintiffs’ favor.”
Congress gives HUD about $56 million each year for nonprofits that fight housing discrimination. That money is typically spread out across more than 100 separate, smaller grants.
This year, HUD said that it would give $46 million to five entities. It also rewrote the eligibility rules in a way that disqualified “nearly all existing fair housing organizations,” the plaintiffs wrote in their July lawsuit.
In addition to stating that the proposed changes were part of a modernization effort, HUD said in court filings that the changes would make the process of allocating federal money more competitive among fair housing groups.
“Ultimately, Congress has given HUD discretion to consider the optimal distribution of funding to achieve statutory goals ‘in what it sees as the most effective or desirable way,’” HUD wrote in its response to the request for a temporary restraining order earlier this month.
While Joun’s order isn’t a final resolution of the lawsuit, it requires HUD to release the money using last year’s rules instead of the proposed new ones.
“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. 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,’” Lisa Rice, CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance, said in a statement.
“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.”
