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Thursday, March 6, 2025
Please Help Defeat the 30-Day Eviction Notice for Subsidized Housing
National Housing Law Project Leads 200+ Orgs In New Letter Urging Congress To Protect Tenants From Avoidable Evictions
The National Housing Law Project (NHLP) has sent a letter to congressional leadership signed by more than 200 national, state, and local organizations urging Congress to protect tenants from unfair, unexpected, and avoidable evictions at any time. In various states, landlords can evict tenants in the private market with little, if any, notice. Federal law requires a 30-day notice for those tenants living in housing under the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Department of Agriculture (USDA), other federal housing programs, as well as other federally-backed housing. By giving tenants 30 days to fix issues with their tenancy before their landlord can file an eviction, the law helps both tenants and landlords avoid undergoing an expensive eviction process. NHLP and the George Washington University Health Justice Policy and Advocacy Clinic will soon meet with congressional leaders to discuss protecting the 30-day notice requirement and prevent a reversal of this critical protection.
The letter comes after lawmakers backed by real estate industry corporations reintroduced bicameral legislation that would repeal 30-day notice and put seniors, families with children, people of color, people with disabilities, and veterans at immediate risk of displacement or even homelessness. If passed, the bill would roll back existing protections that tenants, landlords, and courts rely upon, and shrink the notice period for an eviction across the country from 30 days to as little as five days or less in federal housing programs and federally-backed properties.
Read the National Housing Law Project’s letter and statement in response to the 30-day notice repeal bill. Find here a research brief with data showing how 30-day notice protects tenants and stabilizes communities.
HUD Baltimore Field Office to Close, Along with Many Other HUD Field & Regional Offices
The Baltimore field office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will soon be permanently closed, along with many other HUD field offices. The downtown Baltimore office, which employs about 90, is to be shut down. All who work there will likely be terminated by order of the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency. The closure is part of HUD's reduction of regional and field offices.
Eliminating the Baltimore office and transferring cases to other FHA offices will mean it will take longer to receive approvals and resolve issues between the loan originator and the agency. Boston or New York are already swamped with servicing the loans. HUD construction analysts, appraisers, underwriters, and, most importantly, asset management who know the market here are all going to be eliminated. It is going to make it much more difficult to finance and monitor housing.
The biggest impact will be a severe slowdown in processing Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans for multi-family projects, one of the Baltimore office’s major functions. An observer commented, “It doesn’t make any sense to do this in the name of saving money. They finance anything from affordable- to market-rate projects, and they also asset manage them. They actually make money – billions – for the federal government that gets put back into the general fund.” Created by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression under the authority of the National Housing Act of 1934, the FHA is one of the main government agencies that offers low down payment mortgages for qualifying homebuyers.
Other functions of the Baltimore office include Community Planning and Development (CPD), which administers local grants to promote better housing and expanded economic opportunities to low and moderate income persons, and enforcement of the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination in housing-related activities. Another loss from the shutdown of the field office will be oversight of Section 8 and voucher housing and local public housing authorities. Because this office administers the money to public housing authorities and keeps a watch over those funds, there will be more opportunity for fraud.
Responding after publication, the HUD Public Affairs Office said “no decisions have been finalized.”
HUD Publishes Very Weakened Version of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule in the Federal Register
On March 3, 2025, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) published its stripped-down version of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) Rule in the Federal Register. This interim final rule repeals the 2021 interim final rule, including any parts of the 2015 AFFH Rule incorporated therein, and the 1994 AI requirements where they appear in regulation or guidance.
The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) Rule is intended to implement a provision of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which banned housing discrimination and predatory real estate practices. The AFFH was designed to help local governments and housing agencies proactively address persistent barriers to fair housing and equal opportunity. Learn more about the history of the Fair Housing Act and the AFFH rule at the National Fair Housing Alliance.
Under the new AFFH Interim Final Rule (IFR), jurisdictions will still be required to certify that they are affirmatively furthering fair housing (AFFH). However, these certifications will be deemed sufficient as long as the jurisdiction took any action during the period that is rationally related to promoting fair housing, such as efforts to eliminate housing discrimination or to improve housing conditions. Unlike previous requirements, jurisdictions will not need to provide detailed reports or justifications to demonstrate compliance.
The rule will be finalized on April 2, 2025. HUD is inviting public comment on the IFR for a 60-day period until May 2, 2025 and has said that all feedback will be considered as part of its ongoing review to ensure consistency. Comments can be submitted to the Federal Register: Federal Register: Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Revisions.
To support stakeholders in the AFFH public comment process, PolicyLink has developed a public comment guide for the Biden Administration’s 2023 Proposed AFFH Rule. While the 2025 IFR differs from the 2023 proposed rule, the guidance in this resource are relevant. The Guide provides essential tools to help individuals and organizations craft strong, equity-focused comments, including: strategies for advancing equity in public comments, An overview of the federal rulemaking and public comment process, a step-by-step guide to writing and submitting effective feedback, key data sources to strengthen your comment, Sample language tailored for organizations across sectors
PolicyLink Comment on 2023 Proposed AFFH Rule
PolicyLink Full Comment Guide for the 2023 proposed AFFH Rule
Despite this shift at the federal level, states and local jurisdictions can continue to implement their own policies and planning efforts to promote inclusive communities.
Explore more about AFFH and access additional advocacy tools:
Alliance for Housing Justice: Understanding AFFH - Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing | AHJ
National Fair Housing Alliance: Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing - NFHA
National Housing Law Project: Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing | NHLP
PRRAC: Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH)
Tuesday, March 4, 2025
A Black Family’s Home was Too Close to a White School. So D.C. Took it in 1931.
A documentary Diminished Returns: The Black Wealth Gap in Washington, D.C. has been released examining the travails of the Black Julien family and similar stories to explain the huge wealth gap between Black and White Washington. The film was written and directed by Dr. Sabiyha Prince and executive produced by Temi F. Bennett. The documentary, which debuted in the District in 2024, is a product of iF, A Foundation for Radical Possibility. The documentary features District leaders such as D.C. Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie (I-At Large), historian G. Derek Musgrove, and anti-mass incarceration activist Tony Lewis Jr., talking about how the racial wealth gap negatively impacts Blacks economically, politically, and socially.
The Black Julien family - direct descendants of George and Martha Washington’s enslaved maid - had 0.38 acres of land and a house on Broad Branch Road in Northwest Washington. In the spot where it once stood is now a basketball court. It was taken from the family by the federal government’s D.C. Commission in 1931. Because they were Black. “The Presence of this house, with its colored occupants, so close to a white school is a source of possible friction that is thought desirable to remove,” Assistant Engineer Commissioner H.L. Robb explained in the Evening Star. They were not evicted because the new School needed the space: the new all-White Lafayette School was nearly constructed when the family was told to leave, and it was made clear why. This was the end of Chevy Chase as a thriving Black neighborhood.
The filmmakers examine the way these forced evictions and continuing housing discrimination have left the District’s White households with 81 times the median savings and assets as its Black households, a 2016 report showed. “It’s happening all over the country,” said Prince. “It’s repeated, and it has devastating impacts on the economies of Black households and what they can hand down to their progeny moving forward, right? Because that’s a key way in which people accumulate wealth, through inheritances,” Prince said. History and data show that lack of consideration for equity over centuries created the wealth gap.
The film makes the argument for giving reparations to families such as the Juliens in D.C. to right this wrong. And the filmmakers believe the nation’s capital is the best place to do this because there is a precedent. On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the “Act for the Release of certain Persons held to Service or Labor within the District of Columbia.” That paid former enslavers $300 for every person who was emancipated - 3,100 in total. That cost the U.S. government $930,000, almost $30 million today.
In total, the Julien family was forced out three times. In addition to the Broad Branch Road incident, Black homes part of “Freedman’s Village,” built for emancipated people to restart their lives in 1863, were seized in 1900 with the land incorporated into Arlington National Cemetery. Another was after Julien’s family moved to Irving Street in Northwest Washington but was displaced when a school was built there, Julien said in an oral history interview with the Historic Chevy Chase D.C. The historic society currently has an educational project "Black Land Loss: Chevy Chase DC in the Arc of American History: Tracing a Black Enclave from the 18th to the 21st Centuries."
When the Diminished Returns documentary was being made in 2023, the D.C. Council was getting ready to act on landmark legislation, the “Reparations Foundation Fund and Task Force Establishment Act,” that would create a group to study reparation proposals. Renamed the “Insurance Database Amendment Act,” it is not yet codified but projected to become effective on March 6, 2025.
Sunday, March 2, 2025
Oregon Man Pleads Guilty in Swatting and Bomb Threats Scheme That Targeted Jewish Hospitals in New York City and Long Island
In federal court in Brooklyn, Domagoj Patkovic has pleaded guilty to conspiring to make threats concerning explosives and conveying false information concerning explosives. The proceeding was held before U.S. District Judge Ramon E. Reyes. When sentenced, Patkovic faces up to 15 years in prison. Patkovic was charged in August 2024.
“As he admitted today, the defendant intentionally targeted Jewish hospitals and care centers in our District with bomb threats. In doing so, he needlessly endangered patients and staff and diverted critical law enforcement resources from their core mission of keeping our community safe,” stated U.S. Attorney Durham. “We will prosecute dangerous bomb threats and swatting schemes to the fullest extent of the law.” Swatting is a criminal harassment act of deceiving an emergency service into sending a police or emergency service response team to another person's address.
According to prosecutors, Patkovic was part of a crew of troublemakers who began making anonymous threatening calls to Jewish hospitals and facilities on Long Island among other targets throughout the country in May 2021 - and livestreamed the hoaxes on social media and electronic devices. As set forth in the indictment and in court filings, the defendant himself made threats in at least six separate calls to hospitals (when he told hospital staffer he wanted to kill all Jews, using an antisemitic slur, according to prosecutors) and on a call with local law enforcement who had responded to a 911 notification from one of the hospitals. On several occasions, local police responded to the scene and conducted bomb sweeps. On at least one occasion in September 2021, the hoax bomb threat resulted in a partial evacuation and lockdown of an entire hospital on Long Island. No explosive devices were ultimately found in any of the locations.
Durham expressed his appreciation to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office, the New York City Police Department, Nassau County Police Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon for their assistance on the case.
After Neo-Nazis Targeted a Majority-Black Town. Locals Launched an Armed Watch
On February 7th, a U haul van full of neo-Nazis gathered in the predominantly Black Cincinnati suburb of Lincoln Heights, which boasts a modest population of 3,144 people. They wore masks and carried guns as they called residents racist slurs. The group of white supremacists also waved flags with red swastikas on a highway overpass. The town originated as a self-governing Black community for laborers blocked from Cincinnati and surrounding towns because of their race, and is the oldest north of the Mason-Dixon Line, it proclaims on its website. The neo-Nazis also marched that same day in Evendale, a nearby village.
Two weeks after that disturbing incident, someone - presumably another white supremacist - spread racist pamphlets from the Ku Klux Klan all over Lincoln Heights. Disappointed by local law enforcement officials who did not spring into action to protect them, Black residents have now taken things into their own hands.
Lincoln Heights' police department was disbanded in 2014; the area is served by the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office. Following the February 7th demonstration, residents - alongside Hamilton County Commissioner Alicia Reece - questioned why police made no arrests or citations after the neo-Nazis intimidated residents and threatened racist violence. Evendale police also released body-camera footage showing officers being cordial with the masked group.
As a result, the Lincoln Heights Safety and Watch Program was formed. Black men now are carrying rifles to guard the roads that lead directly into Lincoln Heights, questioning anyone trying to enter. Ohio is an open-carry state and folks are taking advantage of that, according to spokesperson Daronce Daniels, a spokesman for Program, which coordinates the guards who serves as guards for Lincoln Heights. The program directs members to report suspicious activity to the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office.“ An American individual protecting his homeland with a firearm - I thought that was the most American thing that we [could] do,” he said.
The Hamilton County prosecuting attorney’s office is reviewing the neo-Nazi rally to determine if it will make criminal charges but said it would take time to complete a thorough assessment given the volume of evidence.
Daniels said the Lincoln Heights guards will continue patrolling their village for the foreseeable future. They feel they are still under threat.
The Village of Lincoln Heights and members of the Lincoln Heights Missionary Baptist Church have initiated a public boycott of Evendale after their frustration with the Evendale Police Department (EPD) and Evendale leaders regarding the neo-Nazi demonstration that occurred February 7th. The Rev. Dr. Julian Cook, pastor of the Lincoln Heights Missionary Baptist Church, said at a February. 24 press conference at the church that no arrests or citations have been made by the EPD in connection with the incident. However, he expressed appreciation for Evendale officials’ decision to hire a third-party team to evaluate their handling of the demonstration.
Read the February 27, 2025 Washington Post article.
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