National ReviewBiden’s Executive Order on Housing: Replacing Old Sins with New OnesPresident Biden’s flurry of executive orders has now extended to housing policy — and to a pledge to reverse the Trump administration’s approach to “fair housing.” Specifically, that would mean reversing the Trump reversal of an Obama-era rule known as “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” — designed to introduce “affordable” (read “subsidized”) housing into higher-income, suburban zip codes. To justify a return to this controversial policy, President Biden rehearsed a long litany of federal housing-policy sins. He’s right about many of those — but wrong about his approach to redress. More subsidized housing, in the tragic public-housing tradition, will only spur division and do little to help minority groups in their quest for upward mobility. It is incontrovertible, as President Biden stated in his executive order, that “during the 20th century, Federal, State, and local governments systematically implemented racially discriminatory housing policies that contributed to segregated neighborhoods and inhibited equal opportunity and the chance to build wealth for Black, Latino, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and Native American families, and other underserved communities.” Most significantly, the Federal Housing Authority would not insure mortgages for blacks in white neighborhoods, and racial…
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