Fair housing advocates: HUD's rule suspension hurting Connecticut families, Jamil Ragland, CT Mirror, Dec. 10, 2017, available here
In all the furor over Russian election meddling, travel bans, free trade agreements, and concern about the place of the United States in the international order, the Department of Housing and Urban Development hasn’t received much media attention. But under the leadership of Dr. Ben Carson, HUD is causing alarms to sound for fair-housing advocates in Connecticut.
At the center of their concerns is a regulation created during President Obama’s administration, the Small Area Fair Market Rent regulation. HUD has decided to suspend implementation of the rule, a decision which will impact more than 2 million low-income American households which rely on housing choice vouchers from the federal government.
The Mirror spoke with Erin Boggs, the founder and executive director of Open Communities Alliance, and Sasha Samberg-Champion, a lawyer with the Relman, Dane and Colfax law firm in Washington, D.C. They are representing two clients in Connecticut in an attempt to force HUD to implement the Small Area Fair Market Rent regulation as planned. In this Sunday conversation, Boggs and Samberg-Champion explain the rule and its potential effects on low-income families in the state.