January 09, 2020

On January 7, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) proposed a new rule to roll back the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule that provided cities with an assessment tool and regulatory guidance to reduce racial segregation. Instead of focusing on reducing discrimination, the new rule would emphasize improving housing choice. Secretary Ben Carson says that the new rule will “empower [mayors] to make housing decisions that meet their [community’s] unique needs,” but housing advocates are concerned it could weaken fair housing enforcement and exacerbate racial segregation.

After several years of delays, on January 6, the first development funded by Los Angeles’s 2016 bond for homeless housing opened its doors. An additional 20 projects are currently under construction, and the city plans to break ground on another 30 in 2020. “This year, we will see an opening of one of these [homeless housing projects] about every three weeks,” said Mayor Eric Garcetti. 

Researchers at the University of Denver released a new online tool that maps Colorado neighborhoods with overlapping housing and health crises. The tool seeks to help policy makers and advocates make decisions that best use the state’s limited resources to support vulnerable communities. Elysia Clemens, deputy director of the Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab, which funded the study, says this study is intended to be a “conversation starter” and that users should “acknowledge that this map is one piece of information, not the full story for any community.”

A new report by the Texas Homeless Network found that more than 8,000 people in Texas’s rural counties experienced homelessness in 2019, matching the number of people experiencing homelessness in Dallas and Houston combined. Rural counties in Texas are less likely to have homeless shelters and nonprofit service networks, so many people experiencing homelessness often seek less formalized solutions. “People might live in a home, but the housing might be substandard. Or they might live in their cars or at their workplace. Homelessness in rural areas is masked,” said Abraham Benavides, a professor at the University of North Texas. 

A recent Seattle Times analysis of census data shows that in the past five years, Seattle experienced a 16 percent increase in renting residents, and now, the city has nearly the same number of renters as homeowners. Homeownership rates increased 8 percent during the same period. Meanwhile, three-quarters of people who moved to Seattle in the past decade are adults younger than 40, most of whom are not financially situated to buy a home, necessitating a rental surge.