- President Donald Trump on Wednesday celebrated the federal government rescinding Obama-era fair-housing rules by saying suburbanites wouldn't have to "be bothered" by low-income housing in their neighborhoods.
- "I am happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood," Trump tweeted.
- The 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regulation required local governments seeking federal housing funding to collect extensive data showing a lack of housing discrimination in their communities.
- Wednesday's tweets were among Trump's most explicit overtures to white fear and grievance in his bid to win back suburban voters who have been staunchly repudiating the GOP since he took office.
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President Donald Trump celebrated the Department of Housing and Urban Development's rollback of an Obama-era fair-housing rule by saying that Americans living in a suburban "dream" would "no longer be bothered" by having families with lower incomes in their neighborhoods.
Last Thursday, Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, said he would rescind the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regulation. The rule required state and local communities seeking federal housing funding to collect extensive data on demographics and living conditions and, importantly, to show that they were not perpetuating racial discrimination.
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"I am happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood," Trump tweeted on Wednesday. "Your housing prices will go up based on the market, and crime will go down. I have rescinded the Obama-Biden AFFH Rule. Enjoy!"
—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2020
Housing advocates have criticized the rule change, saying it would give localities much freer rein to allow discriminatory and unequal housing conditions to persist.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition, for example, said the rule change "represents a complete retreat from efforts to undo historic, government-driven patterns of housing discrimination and segregation throughout the US" and would "allow communities to ignore the essential racial desegregation obligations of fair housing law."
Wednesday's tweets were among Trump's most explicit overtures to white fear and grievance in his bid to win back suburban voters who have been staunchly repudiating the GOP since he took office.
In 2018, Democratic challengers flipped 40 seats in the House of Representatives largely by winning over college-educated suburban voters, according to data compiled by CityLab, which found that 22 of the 40 were "dense suburban" or "sparse suburban" districts.
Now, as polls find former Vice President Joe Biden trouncing Trump among white, college-educated, and suburban voters, Trump has used fear to try to convince voters that Biden's housing plans would make their neighborhoods less safe and desirable.
"The Suburban Housewives of America must read this article," Trump tweeted on Thursday, linking to a New York Post opinion column criticizing Biden's policy plans to expand affordable housing in suburbs and set standards to prevent housing discrimination. "Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your American Dream. I will preserve it, and make it even better!"
Some commentators have said Trump's references to "suburban housewives" and attempts to link Biden with crime and disorder in suburbs appear to stem from an outdated view of suburbs as almost completely occupied by wealthy white people who are fearful of crime and distrustful of diversity in their communities.
While fierce fights against low-income housing persist in many suburban communities, today's suburbs are far more racially and economically diverse than those of the mid-to-late 20th century, when "white flight" propelled many white Americans to flee urban areas for suburbs.
"To most people, the idea that Biden wants to 'destroy the suburbs' makes no sense," The Washington Post's Paul Waldman wrote in an opinion column on July 21. "It's only coherent if you think that an increase in racial diversity would 'destroy' the suburbs, which means that the suburbs only exist if they're all-white."
