Bill Lee: “in a piece of legislation of this size, this scope, and this magnitude, there is always much to praise. Unfortunately…”

“in a piece of legislation of this size, this scope, and this magnitude, there is always much to praise. Unfortunately, from time to time there is much to criticize. Specifically, I rise today to try to correct one major mistake in this bill. As currently written, it permits the Department of Housing and Urban Development to proceed to the implementation of its radical new regulation, the insultingly misnamed affirmatively furthering fair housing rule, or AFFH. Proponents of AFFH, including President Obama, claim that AFFH fulfills the original purpose and promise of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. The truth is, HUD's new housing rule isn't the fulfillment but a betrayal of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. The purpose of the Fair Housing Act was to protect the God-given right of individuals and families, regardless of their skin color or their ethnicity, to buy and rent homes where they please. By contrast, the explicit purpose of HUD's new rule is to empower Federal bureaucrats to dictate where a community's low-income residents will live. This is not what progress looks like. AFFH not only grants unprecedented new powers to HUD--powers that were not contemplated and have no legitimate basis in the Fair Housing Act of 1968--but it will ultimately hurt the very people it purports to help--public housing residents, especially African-American public housing residents who too often find themselves trapped in dysfunctional, broken neighborhoods.…”