This comment responds to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) proposed revisions to a rule on Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (published on January 14, 2020). In the proposed rule change, HUD ignores evidence on ongoing barriers to opportunity that protected groups face and, in doing so, disregards Congress’s intent in passing the Fair Housing Act.

In this letter, Solomon Greene, Martha Galvez, Kriti Ramakrishnan, and Madeline Brown synthesize the evidence on how housing discrimination, residential segregation, and racially concentrated poverty persist in the United States, describe how federal policies created or perpetuated these barriers, and document the impacts these barriers continue to have on people, places, and urban economies. The authors conclude by suggesting evidence-based principles to guide HUD’s work enforcing the Fair Housing Act.