Reaffirming the Federal Commitment to Fair Housing: Lessons from California in Implementing AFFH

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is currently inviting comments on a proposed Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule. The proposed rule reinstates and builds on the Obama Administration’s 2015 rule requiring recipients of HUD funding to set concrete goals to address segregation and disparities in housing opportunities.

In the interval between the Obama and Biden era AFFH rules, the state of California continued to advance the principles of AFFH through state action. These efforts may now offer lessons for federal rulemaking as well as for other states that are preparing to restart implementation on AFFH. A new commentary Reaffirming the Federal Commitment to Fair Housing: Lessons from California in Implementing AFFH highlights three strategies California has taken: encouraging the construction of more affordable housing in higher-resource areas, integrating fair housing goals into its Housing Element planning process, and creating a state level law to maintain AFFH goals regardless of political swings at the federal level.

Read the commentary here.