On August 18, CLPHA Executive Director Sunia Zaterman sent the following letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal's opinions page refuting the many false claims made by President Trump and Secretary Carson in their recent op-ed defending the Trump Administration's elimination of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule:
"The joint opinion article (We’ll Protect America’s Suburbs, August 16, 2020) by President Trump and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Carson is nothing more than election year propaganda that is rife with erroneous claims.
The authors paint the administration’s blatantly racist and illegal rule that eliminates the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule as protecting America’s suburbs. While they quiet their racist dog whistle by claiming that “majorities of African-Americans, Hispanic Americans and Asian-Americans” live in America’s suburbs, they trot out tired tropes used to justify Nixon’s 70s-era “law and order” campaign by characterizing urban cities as full of “crime and chaos” of which one must “escape.” They can’t help themselves since their true intentions are never far from the surface. They claim that the “shameful days of redlining are gone,” yet they don’t mention the shameful effects of redlining continue to haunt this country. A 2017 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found that redlining had a persistent and continuing adverse impact on redlined neighborhoods, which found lower homeownership rates, home values, credit scores and poorer health and education outcomes. Trump and Carson state HUD reversed an Obama administration rule that would have allowed HUD to abolish single family zoning since it was federal overreach into local communities. Yet, a year ago, President Trump signed an executive order to remove overly restrictive zoning to support more local affordable housing.
While President Trump and Secretary Carson paint themselves as protectors of American suburbs, their true intentions are to stoke fear and division as the election approaches."