Trump Administration’s Cuts to Housing Nonprofits Fuel Concerns Over Discrimination

Representative Maxine Waters of California and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts say they are banding together to fight the Trump administration’s recent cuts that they say will leave Americans unprotected from housing discrimination.

On Monday, the two Democrats delivered a letter to Housing and Urban Development secretary Scott Turner that said cutbacks to fair housing initiatives will “embolden housing discrimination” and put “people’s lives at risk.” The letter has 108 signatures, all from Democrats in Congress.

The action comes on the heels of lawsuits filed last week against HUD and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency by four local fair housing organizations that are hoping to make their case class action. Under the DOGE cost-cutting plan, at least 66 local fair housing groups — whose purpose is to enforce the landmark Fair Housing Act that prohibits discrimination in real estate — face the sudden rescission of $30 million in grants.

Mr. Turner has also forecast that he will slash staff by 50 percent at the agency and by 77 percent at its Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, which enforces the Fair Housing Act at the federal level.

“Soon there’ll be no enforcement,” Ms. Waters said in an interview. “We really are going to go backward.”

Ms. Warren said that if housing discrimination is left unchecked, it will freeze more Americans out of a volatile housing market, adding that seniors, people with disabilities, Blacks and Latinos are most at risk of losing their homes in the volatile market.