The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) shift in its approach to the enforcement of fair housing and civil rights laws, combined with deep staff cuts, has raised concerns among internal staff. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has urged HUD’s inspector general to investigate whistleblower claims that the agency leadership is undermining its statutory mission.
In a Sept. 22 letter, Warren cited documents provided by employees in HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, accusing the Trump administration of engaging in systemic efforts to weaken the office’s ability to enforce federal fair housing and civil rights laws. The documents, provided by four attorneys working for the HUD Office of Fair Housing (OFH) within the HUD Office of General Counsel (OGC), claim HUD leaders have reduced the OFH staff by nearly 70 percent since January and informed remaining staffers fair lending enforcement was “not a priority.”
Leaders, managers and other staff within these offices cautioned HUD leadership against the planned staff reductions before bringing the matter to the attention of lawmakers, according to Warren. Among the statutory obligations HUD would allegedly be abandoning are measures described under the Violence Against Women Act and the Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP).
Specifically, they informed HUD leadership the cuts would hinder the agency’s ability to fulfill its statutorily mandated functions, including “its duty to: affirmatively further fair housing; investigate, charge, voluntarily resolve and prosecute complaints of discrimination; administer grants to FHIP recipients; ensure HUD funding recipient and public housing agency compliance with nondiscrimination requirements; and sufficiently staff the department to allow it to comply with these statutory civil rights requirements.”
These warnings and offers to support OGC through alternative work-sharing proposals were ignored, Warren explained.
“HUD officials are instead moving forward with its reassignments and fired an OFH supervisor ‘for their internal advocacy,’” she wrote. “HUD officials allegedly informed ‘OFH attorneys ... that they could go to almost any other office [within the agency]; they must simply abandon fair housing work. HUD has a statutory obligation to prosecute complaints where it finds reasonable cause regarding discrimination.”
Warren also highlighted how the whistleblowers alleged HUD may be violating the law through its efforts to adhere to executive orders intended to root out initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
“HUD has also allegedly prevented OFH from conducting standard reviews of funding opportunity announcements to assess compliance with antidiscrimination laws, allowing a change that ‘ignore[d] Title VI rules and subject[ed] HUD and its recipients to serious risk of illegally subsidizing discrimination,” she wrote.
The whistleblower allegations came less than two months following the introduction of a bipartisan bill intended to strengthen whistleblower protections for federal contract employees at HUD, particularly for those with contracts enacted prior to 2013.