The Department of Housing and Urban Development said Thursday it is opening an investigation into Boston’s housing policies, looking at whether the city’s racial equity initiatives violate the civil rights of white people. The investigation could result in legal action by the Justice Department.
“We believe the City of Boston has engaged in a social engineering project that intentionally advances discriminatory housing policies driven by an ideological commitment to DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] rather than merit or need,” Scott Turner, the federal housing secretary, said in a statement on the agency’s website.
The department informed Boston of its investigation in a letter Thursday that said, under Mayor Michelle Wu, city officials have tried to “smuggle” racial equity into every level of the city’s operations.
In response, a Wu spokesperson called the investigation the latest of multiple “unhinged attacks from Washington.”
“Boston will never abandon our commitment to fair and affordable housing, and we will defend our progress to keep Bostonians in their homes,” the spokesperson wrote.
Turner cited Boston’s Housing Strategy for 2025 as an example of a “racially discriminatory housing plan.” The document spells out the city’s plan to expand affordable housing and includes reducing “racial disparities through homeownership and development opportunities for BIPOC-led organizations.”
“This warped mentality will be fully exposed, and Boston will come into full compliance with federal anti-discrimination law,” Turner said.
Reports find ongoing major racial disparities in homeownership in Greater Boston.
Jacy Gaige, the former director of enforcement in HUD’s office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, said the probe contradicts the country’s foundational civil rights law.
“They’re purporting to investigate the kinds of practices that have in fact been required by courts under these very laws to help address the legacy of discrimination in this country,” Gaige said.
After more than a decade at HUD, Gaige resigned in July. She protested procedural changes that moved power from career officials’ hands to Trump appointees: the authority to approve housing discrimination settlements or new cases, which — according to Gaige — effectively shut down that process.
“Some have been with respect to staffing cuts and removing expertise, and some have been in directives to pause and stop cases on the basis of interpretations that are just inconsistent with long standing federal court interpretations of laws that have been in place for decades,” Gaige said, describing steps HUD has taken under Trump.
Gaige said the probe into Boston appears to be following a similar approach taken by the Department of Education with its civil rights investigations into universities. That effort was led by Craig Trainor, who moved from the Department of Education to become HUD’s assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity. Trainor signed the letter sent to Wu informing her of the probe.
HUD did not respond to a request for comment.
John Smith, executive director of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative based in Roxbury, said the Trump administration is turning “the basic definition of fairness and civil rights basically upside down.” He said HUD has already been gutting protections spelled out in the 1968 Fair Housing Act, part of the Civil Rights Act.
“HUD is rolling back established housing rights for people of all backgrounds. Housing rights with people of color, yes — women, people with disabilities, domestic violence survivors,” Smith said. “That’s a dangerous thing for us to be doing.”
Smith said HUD was making it more difficult to submit housing discrimination complaints and cutting programs through federal Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Equitable Housing Finance Plans, which are meant to reduce barriers to housing finance.
In a city with some of the highest housing costs in the country, the burden falls largely on people of color. According to city data, Latino and Black households in Boston earn only about 50% and 60%, respectively, of the city’s median income of $88,000. That compares to a median income of roughly $116,000 for white households.
Carolyn Chou, Executive Director of Homes for All Massachusetts said HUD’s probe will put Massachusetts residents “at risk of harm in an already-challenging time, and further expose the Administration’s intent to strip Americans of their fundamental rights.”
In September, the Department of Housing and Urban Development sent another letter to top city officials warning that “HUD had reason to believe Boston was using HUD grant assistance in violation of its legal obligations, which prohibits race-based preferences.” That letter asked the city to provide information and documents, and suggested further legal action and review of HUD funding could be taken.
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell recently filed a lawsuit against HUD, along with 20 other states, to stop “unlawful” restrictions on federal grant funding that would result in significant cuts. The restrictions include a mandate that housing providers recognize only two genders and deny services to those who don’t participate in program services.
HUD will be requesting more documents from the city in the next 10 days to investigate alleged discrimination.
