96 Groups Urge HUD to Withdraw Proposal Ending Disparate Impact Rules Under Title VI

The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), joined by 95 other fair housing, consumer advocacy and civil rights organizations and a former HUD official, has filed a comment urging the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to withdraw its proposed rule removing disparate impact protections from its Title VI regulations. According to NFHA, those protections help ensure equal opportunity and freedom from unnecessary barriers in programs funded by HUD.

The coalition argues that HUD’s legal reasoning is unjustified. It says the rule would give states and municipalities more incentive to steer disaster relief funds away from the hardest-hit underserved communities and toward wealthier zip codes. The groups say the protections help ensure federal dollars reach all communities fairly across programs run by states, local governments and public housing authorities.

NFHA Executive Vice President Nikitra Bailey pointed to Hurricane Harvey in 2017, when, she said, HUD found that Texas directed disaster recovery funds away from Black and Latino neighborhoods in Houston despite significant damage there.

NFHA described this as HUD’s second move against disparate impact protections in the same rulemaking. The agency earlier proposed scrapping its Fair Housing Act disparate impact regulations and leaving the question to the courts, which NFHA opposed in formal comments. According to NFHA, the new proposal would drop HUD’s decades-old Title VI requirement that funding recipients set aside unnecessary policies that are unfair based on race, even when not overt.

Why it matters

The proposal is open for public comment and has not been finalized. If adopted, it would change the rules governing how states, cities and public housing authorities use HUD funds, including disaster recovery money.

Source: NFHA, October 14, 2026. Read the original release