1. This week, the FBI released its comprehensive crime report for 2024, which revealed that both VIOLENT CRIME and PROPERTY CRIME reached their LOWEST LEVELS SINCE THE 1960s This a massive story. But you might not have heard about it, even if you follow the news closely. Here's why.

The squatter hysteria from last year is starting to produce what was always intended by the real estate industry - lawful tenants are being removed because they don't have a written lease. www.wsbtv.com/news/local/a...

For the June issue of @thenation.com, I wrote about the Harper’s letter 5 years later, and how under a quarter of its signatories have spoken out about Mahmoud Khalil and other campus activists imprisoned for speech.

New Study 🔔: More than 7M Americans face eviction each year. But if they go to court, most do it alone, without a lawyer. Our researchers studied the initiatives that are trying to change this reality, known as Right to Counsel programs or RTC. evictionlab.org/disrupting-t...

MADISON, Wis. – Yesterday, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and other publications reported that Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan apparently attempted to protect a defendant from ICE agents trying to detain that defendant. (1/6)

I got to meet Dolores Huerta yesterday. Doesn't get much better than that.

This Fair Housing Month we are defending hard-won protections. At @NHLP we’re fighting for a different future. While this moment is hard, we must imagine & build a housing system that puts people over profit. Read more of our thoughts here: conta.cc/3FDXnSa

The CFPB was created in the wake of the Great Recession and the foreclosure crisis - to help prevent a crisis like that from happening again and to protect us - consumers. Bring on the predatory lenders - just what we all needed. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/u...

I hope that Congress ignores Trump's budget proposals much like they did in the first term but there's less spine in Congress this time around. Decimating the voucher program would make all of our lives worse.

In February, DOGE took screenshots of affordable housing providers' websites and LinkedIn profiles that showed terms associated with diversity and equity — then canceled millions of dollars in contracts with those groups. That funding was just reinstated on appeal: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Details from Karl Marx-Hof

In Vienna studying social housing. Starting with the grandma of them all.

Relman Colfax founder John Relman on the attacks on lawyers and why to fight. www.commondreams.org/opinion/big-...

And now it’s back up again. HUD.gov

And … the HUD website is down.

Many conservatives who fought against cancel culture on college campuses and championed free speech are now behind a growing crackdown on political expression at universities, in ways that try to sidestep the Constitution’s free-speech guarantees.

Chris Bergquist worked in HUD’s Fair Housing office. One of his first cases: a disabled woman who couldn’t shower because her landlord refused to make her unit wheelchair accessible. His team forced compliance. Now he’s been fired in Trump’s purge—as Fair Housing staff face 76.5% cuts nationwide.

What’s at risk with CFPB: “Last week, the agency’s consumer response team was called back to work to tackle a backlog of 16,000 complaints, including dozens from homeowners facing imminent foreclosures.” www.nytimes.com/2025/03/15/b...

JD Vances housing line has been well known and he said it at the VP debate. He thinks the solution to the housing shortage is to deport millions and build sprawl on federal protected land. Anyone retweeting him is just a right winger MAGA dude hiding behind the seemingly nonpartisan YIMBY brand.

NEW: Biggest Federal Employee Unions Says Shutdown is Preferable to Elon/Trump CR talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/bigge...

Trump's unprecedented retaliatory efforts against the Perkins Coie law firm have triggered the EVEN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL alarm, whose editorial page notes that Trump's actions "breaks a cornerstone principle of American justice going back to John Adams and the Founders."

My friend Dzovag’s beautiful piece about serving veterans as a doctor for the VA and why that can’t be summed up in bullet points. (Gift article )

Trans people have long warned that most of the victims of anti-trans laws and policies would be cis women and girls who don't have the "right look."

"Calvin Bentley still recalls how he felt when he finally moved his wife and 7-year-old son into a public housing development in Kansas City, Missouri: 'Liberated.'”

“Let’s just be real, if you really don’t have much housing, you probably don’t have much money to eat either,” Calvin Bentley said. “And if you were driving, you probably don’t have money for gas either.” www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Los Angeles has now stopped accepting new applications for housing vouchers due to uncertainty in Washington — exactly what @patrickcsisson.bsky.social warned might happen www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

With the tariffs, I keep thinking about the high percentage of lumber that comes from Canada. Has anyone seen data or research about how this will affect housing prices?

It's the Corporate Financial Protection Bureau now...

Everyday people are the backbone of our economy & they are hurting. The rent eats first – people’s budgets are consumed by high housing costs. For working families, rent hikes can "cut into either medicine or food...or push them into homelessness,” said @shamusroller.bsky.social to @usatoday.com.

HUD cancelled many of the Fair Housing Initiatives Program grants. FHIP funds dynamic work to enforce the Fair Housing Act. 76% reduction proposed in the staffing for the Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity office. Many contractors cut under DEI executive order. Direct attack on civil rights.

A first-ever analysis of fire death rates in modern four-to-six-story buildings with only one stairway shows that residents are not at greater risk, and such buildings could provide much-needed housing. @pewtrusts.org www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-...

Fascism is bad enough - does it have to be so embarrassing too?

🚨 The Office of Fair Housing & Equal Opportunity’s account on X has been DELETED. This administration is making its priorities clear: protecting landlords who discriminate & turning a blind eye to tenants facing injustice.

“My real worry is that very soon we’ll start to see homeless service agencies that go belly up, & there will be formerly homeless people that are served by these programs who are getting forced back onto the streets,” says NHLP @shamusroller.bsky.social. We need to protect tenants & save our homes.

The CFPB has been the most dynamic and effective government agency over the last few years. Literally doing what’s in its name - protecting consumers.

Staffing cuts at HUD will mean rent not getting paid, providers not getting paid, slower disaster response. www.notus.org/policy/housi...

Massive HUD cuts could mean working tenants and families lose their homes. NHLP executive director @shamusroller.bsky.social discussed the potential fallout for tenants with @apnews.com.

The FHA insures hundreds of thousands of mortgages each year and returns billions of dollars to the US Treasury — billions with a B. DOGE is slashing its workforce by 44%. Read our story here: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Trump’s shutdown of the JFK Library won’t lower egg prices or make housing more affordable, but it’s part of a retribution tour designed to distract from his agenda to enrich the wealthy and well-connected at the expense of everyone else.

More details on the erasure of housing research at HUD.

Many HUD staff on probationary status and some others were cut from staff today, receiving notice around 4:00 ET. So many great HUD career staff have been lost through forced resignations and layoffs and that's before the major cuts to staffing begin.

Tenants need protections. 30-day notice can give tenants the time they need to get assistance. “In this housing market, tenants need every chance they can get to avoid evictions & stay housed. Otherwise the risk of homelessness for the tenants is high,” said Marie Claire Tran-Leung to @nytimes.com

The real estate industry wants to pass a bill that would make it easier to evict tenants at any moment. “The timing is a statement of priority. We know how important this is to the industry groups that are really paying to make this happen,” said NHLP’s @noelleporter.bsky.social to @nytimes.com

We’ll continue to have a housing crisis as long as we let housing policy be dictated by the real estate industry. Housing policy should be driven by the needs of the country. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/r...

I’m very grateful to all the amazing people I know that work for the federal government. We occasionally sue the federal government and I get frustrated with how things work or don’t work but there are such amazing people working on housing at HUD, CFPB, DOJ, Treasury, USDA, FHFA.

HUD was low on the priority list but now begins DOGE’s effort to stop good research, fire the best employees and make people less secure in their own homes.

We so badly need a national plan to address housing affordability but I'm not holding my breath. www.cnn.com/2025/02/11/e...

"..refusing to spend money appropriated by Congress under the euphemism of a pause is a violation of the rule of law and suggests that the executive branch can overrule the other two co-equal branches of government. This is contrary to the constitutional framework and not the way our democracy works

I love it when there’s research on something in housing that I hadn’t really thought about before. Seems so obvious once someone says it out loud.

CFPB has stopped predatory practices by tenant screening companies, mortgage lenders, credit agencies, credit card companies and more. Vought gutting CFPB is all about letting private equity and corporations take advantage of the rest of us. www.politico.com/news/2025/02...