Trump Misrepresents Obama-Era Fair Housing Rule

In response to a question about his tweet to “all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream,” President Donald Trump suggested that an Obama administration fair housing rule required the construction of low-income homes in suburban areas. It doesn’t.

“So we ended a rule that was a very horrible rule for people in suburbia — in the suburbs,” Trump said in July 31 remarks from the White House South Lawn. “It’s a rule that, basically, you build low-income housing and you build other forms of housing — also having to do with zoning — and destroy people that have lived in communities in suburbia.”

Experts on regulatory processes and community development told us that the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2015 final rule on “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing,” implemented under then-President Barack Obama, did not mandate either low-income housing or rezoning.

In its published