• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About
  • Press Room
  • Poverty & Race Journal
  • Donate
  • Publications
    • PRRAC Publications & PRRAC Authors
    • PRRAC Policy Briefs
    • PRRAC Advocacy Resources
  • Events
  • Contact

PRRAC — Connecting Research to Advocacy

Poverty & Race Research Action Council

MENUMENU
  • Fair Housing
    • Fair Housing Homepage
    • Federal Housing Advocacy – by Program
    • Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH)
    • Housing Mobility (Section 8)
    • Low Income Housing Tax Credit
    • Fair Housing and Community Development
  • School Diversity
  • Environmental Justice
  • Special Projects
    • Civil Rights History
    • Civil Rights & The Administrative State
    • Housing-School Nexus
    • International Human Rights and U.S. Civil Rights Policy
    • One Nation Indivisible: School Diversity, Immigrant Integration, and Multi-Racial Coalitions
    • PRRAC in the Courts
    • CarsonWatch
    • Alliance Housing Justice
  • Search
    • Search

You are here: Home / Browse PRRAC Content / PRRAC Update / PRRAC Update (February 5, 2015): The Housing Trust Fund and Fair Housing; Success Story in CT

PRRAC Update (February 5, 2015): The Housing Trust Fund and Fair Housing; Success Story in CT

February 5, 2015 by

The Housing Trust Fund and Fair Housing:  The National Housing Trust Fund, authorized by Congress in 2008, has the potential to grow to become the most important source of new low income housing funding at the federal level.  Funding was recently authorized for the first time, and HUD has just issued interim program rules.  In comments on the proposed program rules in 2010, we recognized the enormous potential of this program to address severe housing needs and open up new housing opportunities for low income families.  But we also warned HUD that without stronger civil rights guidelines, the new program could simply replicate the segregated patterns of existing subsidized housing programs (see our coalition comments here).  In the new interim rule, HUD declined to adopt any of our specific recommended changes, deferring instead to the weak civil rights rules included in HUD’s HOME program (though it should be noted that the rule imports from the HOME program a prohibition on discrimination against voucher holders and some basic affirmative marketing requirements).

Under the new rule, states will soon be required to develop Housing Trust Fund “allocation plans,” which will guide how funds are distributed in 2016.  To ensure that the Housing Trust Fund lives up to its great potential, it is crucial that advocates engage with their state housing agencies to ensure a fair distribution of HTF funds that expands opportunity and doesn’t compound current patterns of subsidized housing location. We will continue to work on this issue – both in advocacy at HUD and in developing guidelines for state allocation plans.  Please get in touch with us if you are planning to follow this issue in your state.  For more background on the Housing Trust Fund and its implementation, go to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s HTF webpage (the NLIHC led the advocacy to pass and fund the Housing Trust Fund).

New York Times praises Hartford regional school integration plan:  In an editorial this past Sunday, the Times held up Connecticut’s Sheff v. O’Neill two-way voluntary school integration system as a model for New York City in its halting efforts to address increasing racial and economic segregation.  The Connecticut system is indeed impressive – providing integrated education to almost half of Hartford’s schoolchildren in a 30-town regional system of magnet schools and interdistrict transfers.  But the Sheff remedies have been slow in coming – and require continuing advocacy, not just from the lawyers but from parents and community supporters.  PRRAC is proud to support the efforts of the Sheff Movement coalition, a city and suburban parent and community coalition devoted to improving and expanding quality integrated education in Connecticut. For more information go to www.sheffmovement.org.

 

Two steps forward, one step back in Department of Education budget:  There are some positive new elements in the President’s proposed budget for the Department of Education, including substantial new Title I funding for higher poverty schools and districts, major funding for early education and community college enrollment, a new proposed “equity and outcomes pilot” to more equitably distribute federal funds, and a big increase in funding for the Office of Civil Rights, which has seen a corresponding increase in civil rights enforcement activity in the Obama administration.  However, we are baffled by the relative lack of support for school diversity initiatives in the President’s budget: the Magnet Schools Assistance Program (the only current Department program that directly supports school integration) remains flat-funded at$91.6 million, in comparison to federal grants for charter schools, which would see a more than $120 million increase (to $375 million), and the Promise Neighborhoods program, which would see a more than $93 million increase (to $150 million).  The evidence has become so powerful on the educational benefits of racial and economic integration, it’s a shame the federal government is not investing accordingly.

Filed Under: PRRAC Update Tagged With: Department of Education, Fair Housing, hartford regional school integration plan, Housing Trust Fund, school integration

You might also like…

Fair Housing and Environmental Justice: New Strategies and Challenges (Megan Haberle, January 2018)
Disrupting the Reciprocal Relationship Between Housing and School Segregation (Philip Tegeler & Michael Hilton, November 2017)

Primary Sidebar

PRRAC Updates

PRRAC Update (January 14, 2021): Cashin on “Whitelash”; More HUD and ED Developments

PRRAC Update (December 22, 2020): 30th Anniversary Issue; and Another Victory for School Integration

PRRAC Update (December 10, 2020): Recommendations for a new AFFH rule + school integration goals for the first 100 days

Previous Updates...

PRRAC in the News

Billions in School Construction in CT Hasn’t Made a Dent in Segregation — But This Year, Things Could Be Different (Connecticut Mirror)

January 4, 2021

Education Dept. Gets $73.5 Billion in Funding Deal That Ends Ban on Federal Aid for Busing (Education Week)

December 22, 2020

Massachusetts’ Public Schools are Highly Segregated. It’s Time We Treated That Like the Crisis It Is (Boston Globe)

December 11, 2020

Opinion: A Truly Life-Changing Voucher Program is Within Reach for Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority (Cleveland.com)

October 12, 2020

Previous Posts...

PRRAC on Twitter

Tweets by @PRRAC_DC

Poverty & Race Journal

Footer

PRRAC – Poverty & Race Research Action Council

The Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC) is a civil rights law and policy organization based in Washington, D.C. Our mission is to promote research-based advocacy strategies to address structural inequality and disrupt the systems that disadvantage low-income people of color. PRRAC was founded in 1989, through an initiative of major civil rights, civil liberties, and anti-poverty groups seeking to connect advocates with social scientists working at the intersection of race and poverty…Read More

Archives

Resources at PRRAC

  • Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing
  • Environmental Justice
  • Fair Housing
  • Fair Housing & Community Development
  • Low Income Housing Tax Credit
  • Poverty & Race Journal
  • PRRAC Update
  • School Diversity
  • Housing Choice Voucher Mobility
  • PRRAC in The Courts

Copyright © 2021 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in var _ctct_m = "7608c7e98e90af7d6ba8b5fd4d901424"; //static.ctctcdn.com/js/signup-form-widget/current/signup-form-widget.min.js

PRRAC — Connecting Research to Advocacy

  • Fair Housing
    • Fair Housing Homepage
    • Federal Housing Advocacy – by Program
    • Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH)
    • Housing Mobility (Section 8)
    • Low Income Housing Tax Credit
    • Fair Housing and Community Development
  • School Diversity
  • Environmental Justice
  • Special Projects
    • Civil Rights History
    • Civil Rights & The Administrative State
    • Housing-School Nexus
    • International Human Rights and U.S. Civil Rights Policy
    • One Nation Indivisible: School Diversity, Immigrant Integration, and Multi-Racial Coalitions
    • PRRAC in the Courts
    • CarsonWatch
    • Alliance Housing Justice
  • Search
  • About
  • Press Room
  • Poverty & Race Journal
  • Donate
  • Publications
    • PRRAC Publications & PRRAC Authors
    • PRRAC Policy Briefs
    • PRRAC Advocacy Resources
  • Events
  • Contact