This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, August 30th, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Regulations known as Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing have been suspended by HUD Secretary Ben Carson,

and he's taken a fair bit of heat for it. So what does that policy change actually mean for making

housing more plentiful and affordable.

Emily Hamilton is a research fellow with the Mar Cadus Center.

We discussed the change and some other options for putting quality

housing within reach for more Americans.

What essentially has Secretary Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development?

What changes has he made with respect to affordable housing? Why are they being criticized and why do you think that criticism is unfair?

Secretary Carson suspended the regulation that former Secretary Julian Castro had implemented, which was with the stated purpose of carrying

out affirmatively furthering fair housing, or AFFH, which is a piece of statute that requires HUD not only to

enforce laws preventing explicit racial segregation or racial

preference in housing, but also to take additionally steps that work toward affirmatively furthering fair housing.

Now what that means is a bit ambiguous.

Under the Castro rule, localities were required to do extensive studies and gather a bunch of data about

socioeconomic segregation in their communities.

And then in order to continue getting community development block grants,

which are one of the only federal programs that gives money directly from the federal government to local jurisdictions.

They were required to create plans to better allow for socioeconomic integration if they did not perform well on these

integration metrics prior to doing these studies. So Carson has suspended that rule and has

said that he wants to implement a new role with a focus on requiring jurisdictions to liberalize

...