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Homeless shelters have become the latest battleground in the national debate over transgender rights. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is expected in September to finalize regulations that would allow people to stay in homeless shelters based on the gender they identify with. The proposal has set off a firestorm, pitting LGBT groups against religious organizations that operate many homeless shelters. “Transgender women are women regardless of whether they were born male,” said David Stacy, government affairs director at the Human Rights Campaign. “If you’re a transgender woman and you walk into a homeless shelter and they treat...

For years, the federal government avoided insuring mortgages in black neighborhoods, a practice known as redlining that exacerbated racial divides throughout America’s cities. Redlining has long been outlawed, but in New York City, the federal government is again disproportionately hurting black homeowners, according to a federal lawsuit filed by a nonprofit that represents low-income New Yorkers. This time, the suit says, the government is fueling racial disparities not through its lending policies but in how it handles foreclosures. Since the financial crisis pushed thousands of homeowners in New York and across the country into foreclosure, the federal Department of Housing...

Something very courageous happened at a recent Douglas County commissioners’ hearing. Colorado Community Media reported that at a June 28 hearing, Commissioners Roger Partridge and David Weaver voted “no” to accepting federal Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) monies. In the past, CDBG funds have been distributed to a variety of nonprofit and non-governmental entities throughout Douglas County. Both commissioners voiced their concerns of the far-reaching rules, regulations and compliance requirements hidden deep within HUD’s updated CDBG application. Included in HUD’s application are two things that should cause each of us to pause. The first is the...

Housing Secretary and potential Democratic vice-presidential prospect Julian Castro violated federal law when he touted Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in a media interview earlier this year, according to a federal watchdog report released Monday. The seven-page report by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel concluded Castro violated the Hatch Act, which bars most Executive Branch officials from expressing their political views while on official business. According to the report, he crossed the line during an April 4 interview that mostly was about HUD’s plans to increase Internet access to children and other agency-related issues. …

SAN ANTONIO— A U.S. Office of Special Counsel report released Monday found that Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro violated the Hatch Act, which restricts the political activity of some federal employees, during an April interview with Yahoo News. Castro's statements during the interview, according to a OSC news release, mixed his "personal political views with officials agency business despite his efforts to clarify that some answers were being given in his personal capacity." The department found he violated the act by "advocating for and against presidential candidates while giving a media interview in his official capacity on April...

County Executive for Westchester County NY, Rob Astorino If information is power, Rob Astorino has enough to shatter the administration’s media halo and send HUD officials slithering behind their stacks of regulations. Astorino is the County Executive for Westchester County, NY, an upscale community north of NYC that is home to Andrew Cuomo, George Soros, Hillary and Bill Clinton to name a few. In the name of fair housing, HUD is now implementing the most abusive, property-rights-grabbing, local-rule-neutering regulation since our Founders cast off monarchical handouts for natural rights

Editor's note: This column was co-authored by Stephen Moore. We are going to reveal the grand secret to getting rich by investing. It's a simple formula that has worked for Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn and all the greatest investment gurus over the years. Ready? Buy low, sell high. It turns out that Donald Trump has been very, very good at buying low and selling high, and it helps account for his amazing business success. But now Hillary Clinton seems to think it's a crime. Campaigning in California last week she wailed that Trump “actually said he was hoping for the...

Vote Description This vote was a procedural vote to kill an amendment offered by Senator Lee that would have defunded implementation of a Department of Housing and Urban Development rule that basically federalizes zoning laws and encourages the forced economic diversification of neighborhoods. Rhetorically speaking this rule is a war on the suburbs as it uses the power of federal government to centrally plan out neighborhoods. The rule is a massive power grab by progressive bureaucrats to allow them to conduct large scale social experiments with real neighborhoods by forcing the collection of data that will be used to evaluate...

Last Friday, May 20, 2016, something happened in the U.S. Senate you won’t hear about in the mainstream media. You can read about it here. Gary Aminoff comments in the following short video.

Nearly a decade after the crash of the U.S. Housing market, the Obama administration continues to pursue claims against large financial institutions accused of contributing to the crash. For instance, in the past three years the Department of Justice (DOJ) settled with JPMorgan Chase & CO. in November 2013, Citigroup Inc. in July 2014, and Bank of America in August in 2014. These settlements concerned allegations related to the issuance of residential mortgage backed securities, and collectively these three settlements alone have totaled $36.65 billion in payments from the banks to various federal, state, non-governmental organizations, and direct consumer relief....

They’re coming for your home. Right now. I suggest you save it. I can guide you, but you must do exactly as I say. Except, this isn’t The Matrix. You’re no actor, like Keanu Reeves, playing a distraught programmer-hacker named “Neo.” Nor am I an actor, like Laurence Fishburne, playing your guide “Morpheus.” This is real life, baby. Your home or apartment—and the neighborhood in which you live—is under siege. “Agents”—sans black glasses and black business suits—who work for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have written a new regulation called “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” (AFFH) that...

The Lee Amendment to defund President Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation failed in the Senate yesterday because not enough Republicans backed it. The Amendment was tabled by a vote of 60-37. Jeremy Carl aptly describes this vote as a defeat for conservatism, community control, and common sense. It is a victory, as Carl says, for turning the federal government into a National Zoning board, forcing high density housing on unwilling cities and towns, and letting bureaucrats decide the racial, ethnic and income balance of local communities.

WASHINGTON — A proposed amendment aimed at defunding a controversial Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regulation related to Section 8 Housing was tabled in the upper chamber Thursday. Utah Sen. Mike Lee proposed an amendment to the Senate Transportation and HUD appropriations bill that would have defunded a regulation stopping the implementation of the HUD regulation known as Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH).

Tell Washington regulators to stay in their own backyard. But we have to make sure we send the same message from our yards and post ‘no trespassing’ signs in big, bold letters When the all-encompassing Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation was first proposed in 2013, we addressed this inherent enslavement of every American to federal authority. Does the term “enslavement” hit a raw nerve… good. The article, 21st century Slavery – HUD vs MLK, took the issue of a federal agency dispensing zoning directives for neighborhoods, your neighborhood, to the crux of the problem – the creation of a...

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning appeared on the Rush Limbaugh Show with guest host Mark Steyn at 2:30PM EST to discuss the imminent Senate vote on an amendment by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), S.3897, to the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) appropriations bill that will prohibit implementation of the HUD regulation “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” (AFFH) that conditions $3 billion of yearly community development block grants on 1,200 recipient cities and counties rezoning neighborhoods along income and racial guidelines.

Hillary’s rumored running mate, Housing Secretary Julian Castro, is cooking up a scheme to reallocate funding for Section 8 housing to punish suburbs for being too white and too wealthy. The scheme involves super-sizing vouchers to help urban poor afford higher rents in pricey areas, such as Westchester County, while assigning them government real-estate agents called “mobility counselors” to secure housing in the exurbs. Castro plans to launch the Section 8 reboot this fall, even though a similar program tested a few years ago in Dallas has been blamed for shifting violent crime to affluent neighborhoods. It’s all part of...

You may not have heard of Julian Castro, currently Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, but you will. Hillary Clinton has him very near the top of her list for the veep slot on her ticket. It makes sense: he’s Hispanic, hard left, and the product of an elite education (Stanford, Harvard Law). So serious is the possibility that Page Six reports of him (and his brother Joaquin): “Surprisingly, they don’t speak Spanish,” one insider told me. “They are cramming with Rosetta Stone.” (A spokesman for Julián denies he is studying Spanish.) Julian was Mayor of San Antonio before he...

By every calculation, Julian Castro would be the ideal running mate for Hillary Clinton should she avoid criminal prosecution and gain the Democratic nomination. He is young, Hispanic, a former mayor of San Antonio, smack dab in the great red state of Texas, and the current Secretary of HUD in the Obama administration. He would serve as a counterweight to Ted Cruz, should he become the Republican nominee, and would appeal to Hispanics, a fast growing demographic that both parties are wooing. However, a number of liberal progressive groups are moving to block Castro as unacceptable for a Democratic national...

Crime: The Obama administration has just made it easier for felons to move in next door. Landlords who don’t want tenants who are going to mug their neighbors or deal drugs will now be treated as racists and potentially sued. Last week, the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued new guidelines to landlords, warning that bans against renters with criminal convictions violate the Fair Housing Act because they disproportionately affect minorities. In effect, the Obama regime is now outlawing criminal background checks for apartment rentals, even though such screening is critical for the protection and security of tenants and...

The National Housing Trust Fund will give housing assistance to the very poorest households in the nation ___ The federal government debuted a program on Monday to provide housing for the very poorest residents in America. The National Housing Trust Fund is a new affordable-housing program, one that creates permanently affordable housing for extremely low-income households. Julián Castro, Secretary for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, announced that $174 million in allocations for the National Housing Trust Fund would be available soon. He and other officials from HUD, along with other housing policy officials, broke down the details...