PITTSBURGH (Newsradio 1020 KDKA/AP) - The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development visits Pittsburgh Friday (July 24).
Dr. Ben Carson’s Foster Youth to Independence initiative was launched a year ago.
It helps teens leaving foster care transition to adult live.
Secretary Carson joined the KDKA Radio Morning Show on Friday.
“Over the past year, we’ve been able to help 665 young people including 14 in the state of Pennsylvania,” said Carson.
Carson says about 25 percent of teens leaving foster homes end up homeless.
The Independence Initiative provides rent vouchers.
For more information on the program, visit HUD’s website.
On Thursday, Secretary Carson terminated the Obama-era 2015 AFFH Rule.
A press release from HUD says the removal “returns power to localities in effort to advance fair housing nationwide.”
HUD says the program proved to be “complicated, costly, and ineffective.”
“After reviewing thousands of comments on the proposed changes to the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation, we found it to be unworkable and ultimately a waste of time for localities to comply with, too often resulting in funds being steered away from communities that need them most,” said Secretary Carson in a release. “Instead, the Trump Administration has established programs like Opportunity Zones that are driving billions of dollars of capital into underserved communities where affordable housing exists, but opportunity does not. Programs like this shift the burden away from communities so they are not forced to comply with complicated regulations that require hundreds of pages of reporting and instead allow communities to focus more of their time working with Opportunity Zone partners to revitalize their communities so upward mobility, improved housing, and home ownership is within reach for more people. Washington has no business dictating what is best to meet your local community’s unique needs.”
In a tweet addressed to “The Suburban Housewives of America,” President Donald Trump made his intended audience clear. “Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your American Dream,” he said. "I will preserve it, and make it even better!”
Trump has repeatedly characterized the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regulation as an existential threat to the suburban way of life that will bring about more crime and lower home prices.
It will be replaced by a new rule that reduces the burden on local jurisdictions to prove that they are actively taking steps to address historical patterns of racial segregation in order to qualify for HUD financing.
"Washington has no business dictating what is best to meet your local community’s unique needs,” Carson said.
Fair housing advocates said the new regulations water down the previous requirements to the point of meaninglessness.
"What's surprising is they're going this far and essentially rendering the rule null and void. This is as far as this administration could have possibly gone,” said Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “It feels like a real gutting of the rule.”
Debby Goldberg, vice president of housing policy and special projects for the National Fair Housing Alliance, said that HUD has removed almost any oversight or burden of proof for jurisdictions to show they are addressing racial disparities.
“They’re not even going to check. It’s completely hands off. It’s completely the honor system," she said. "And for jurisdictions that really want to figure this out, it’s almost totally useless”
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