On July 8, 2015, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released its final rule on Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing. This rule seeks to fulfill the original intent of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 to promote fair housing and equal opportunity by reducing segregation, decreasing concentrations of racial or ethnic poverty, and identifying affordable housing needs. To help local jurisdictions meet the new requirements, HUD will provide data sources and assessment tools to facilitate analysis of fair housing concerns at the regional level. Across the entire seven-county CMAP region, it will have broad implications for the more than 40 different governmental entities -- including counties, municipalities, and public housing authorities -- that receive funds directly from HUD.
The new rule requires HUD funding recipients to produce an Assessment of Fair Housing (AFH). Previously, funding participants were required to produce an Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice, which HUD found to be an ineffective method to affirmatively further fair housing. In the new AFH, HUD recipients will evaluate fair housing in their community and region and incorporate fair housing plans and goals into existing planning processes. The rule also encourages collaboration among the many partners grappling with fair housing concerns, including the option to develop multijurisdictional plans. CMAP provided comment on HUD's draft rule and as-yet unreleased assessment tool, and our agency will continue to track how they are implemented.
As a requirement of receiving a HUD Sustainable Communities grant, CMAP partnered with the Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance (CAFHA) to create the Fair Housing and Equity Assessment: Metropolitan Chicago (FHEA). This report features the type of regional fair housing analysis likely envisioned by the new rule. The FHEA analysis concludes that housing continues to be segregated by race in the seven-county Chicago region, resulting in negative impacts on economic growth, transit access, and other measures of regional success. The document includes a number of strategies that local governments can implement to encourage diversity throughout the region and invest in vulnerable communities.
HUD grant recipients across metropolitan Chicago are already partnering through the FHEA, demonstrating how a regional perspective on fair housing can help guide the local investment of federal resources -- a concept at the heart of the new HUD rule. For example, CMAP is working with the Regional Housing Initiative, a partnership of nine housing authorities in northeastern Illinois, to use the FHEA's opportunity index as an evaluation tool when considering where to invest future project-based housing vouchers. Cook County is also using the index to guide which types of investment should be targeted to different areas in Planning for Progress, the County's combined comprehensive economic development strategy and consolidated plan.
GO TO 2040 highlights the importance of livable, sustainable communities to the region's economic vitality. Communities with a well-balanced supply of housing options enjoy many economic and social benefits. Channeling resources in ways that expand housing options for all can help metropolitan Chicago achieve several important goals, including a more balanced tax revenue stream, an easing of unsustainable development, and an overall strengthening of global competitiveness.