When Housing Rights Fall, Equality Slips Away

Marc H. Morial 
President and CEO
National Urban League

“Every way that someone could come to us and get help for free and see that someone is speaking with the voice of the American people and with the government, all of that is being dismantled ... when people lose that, they’re losing something fundamental to the American dream, to the economy, to their lives. And it has a real, concrete impact.” — HUD whistleblower Paul Osadebe

The Trump Administration’s latest assault on fair housing protections is more than a technical rollback. It is a deliberate step backward in the long fight for racial equity and opportunity. By stripping resources from HUD’s fair housing division, slowing investigations, and easing the burden on cities and landlords, this administration is sending a clear signal: the federal government will no longer stand firmly on the side of justice in housing.

For generations, housing has been the foundation of the American Dream. A home is more than shelter. It is the anchor of stability, the pathway to generational wealth, and the entry point to better schools, safer neighborhoods, and economic mobility. When these protections are weakened, those doors close — and too often, they close hardest on Black families.

We know where this road leads. Housing segregation in America was not an accident. It was the result of deliberate government policy: redlining maps that marked Black neighborhoods as too risky for investment, racially restrictive covenants that excluded Black families from buying homes, highways that cut through thriving communities, and lending practices that preyed on rather than protected those locked out of mainstream credit. These were not unintended consequences; they were purposeful choices that created a geography of inequality still visible today.

The consequences endure. Black homeownership rates lag far behind those of white families. Schools remain segregated by neighborhood. Wealth gaps widen with every generation denied the chance to own a home in a stable, appreciating community. The protections of the Fair Housing Act were designed to interrupt this cycle. When those protections are gutted, the old patterns threaten to reemerge.

The stakes today are clear. Weakening fair housing enforcement means that a Black family can be turned away from a rental unit with little recourse. It means lenders can use coded criteria to exclude entire communities. It means cities can avoid taking meaningful action to dismantle segregation. And it means another generation of children grows up confined by the zip code into which they are born.

Black history in America is inseparable from the struggle for fair housing. From battles against redlining and contract lending to fights for public housing reform, housing has always been at the heart of the civil rights movement. To roll back these protections now is not just a policy shift, it is an erasure of that struggle and a denial of the lessons learned at great cost.

We cannot allow complacency in the face of such deliberate erosion. Fair housing is not a luxury or a partisan issue. It is a civil right, and it is a test of whether America intends to honor its own principles. This means restoring strong enforcement, demanding accountability from local governments, investing in affordable housing, and challenging discriminatory practices in all their forms.

The Trump Administration may seek to undo decades of progress, but history reminds us that progress is never given; it is fought for and defended. The right to live free from discrimination, to raise a family in safety, and to build wealth through homeownership is fundamental to the American promise. We will not go back to a time when those rights were denied.

Fair housing is racial justice. Fair housing is economic justice. And fair housing is democracy itself.

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 38TBE 9/26/25 ▪ 80 Pine Street ▪ New York, NY 10005 ▪ (212) 558-5300

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