Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson is taking new steps to roll back an Obama-era rule intended to combat housing segregation.
The Trump administration on Monday formally began the process of dismantling a rule requiring cities and towns to create plans to combat historic patterns of housing segregation or risk losing federal funding, NBC News reported.
The Trump administration said it would instead focus on increasing the supply of affordable housing across the country. Carson told The Wall Street Journal that he would "encourage the development of mixed-income multifamily dwellings all over the place" by making HUD money contingent on looser zoning rules.
The Obama-era rule is "suffocating investment in some of our most distressed neighborhoods that need our investment the most," Carson said in a statement.
But Sara Pratt, a former Obama official who helped develop the rule, said the Trump administration's moves would enable communities to ignore long-standing barriers to fair housing and integration.
