“It just takes people speaking up and doing the right thing.”

Dear America,

Many of my colleagues will probably tell you that they've wanted to work in public service their entire lives. That's true for me as well, but it's not what I want this letter to be about. I took a job at HUD 12 years ago because I wanted to help fix a strained system. After working in my local community for six years helping individuals file fair housing complaints at HUD, I had two realizations: First, HUD is the only place that will help people facing housing discrimination unconditionally. Law firms need a case to be worth their time, and nonprofits are constantly balancing the use of limited resources, but HUD would help people no matter what. And second, it took dedicated people working in that system for it to improve and function. I worked at HUD for over a decade to understand how its fair housing processes worked and rose through the ranks from staff to supervisor so I could use those lessons to improve the fair housing protections we provided to the public. In 2025, that system fell apart.

Every year I worked at HUD, we helped thousands of victims of discrimination find justice that they wouldn't have otherwise received. The system wasn't perfect. It was underfunded and understaffed. But the investigators and attorneys that worked there did their best to serve the public despite those limitations. They worked long hours and invested themselves in the stories of people who called seeking help. Stories of women fleeing abuse, families looking for decent housing, or individuals with disabilities just wanting to easily access their home. Their stories and their pleas for assistance were the fuel that pushed us to continue in less-than-ideal conditions.

As a supervisor, I saw myself as having two roles: Ensure we fulfilled our obligation to serve the public and enable my staff to do their best work. Both tasks became impossible at the start of the second Trump administration. Every day, heart wrenching choices were thrown at me. Withdraw a case and leave the victims without assistance or lose my job. Fire an attorney whose career was just getting started or face punishment. Tell my staff to leave because I can't protect them or tell them to stay and suffer because vulnerable Americans need us here to fight for them. Keep my mouth shut and watch a system that has protected regular people for almost sixty years be ripped apart or speak up and face the consequences. I spoke up for my staff who were being abused, and for the citizens we are supposed to help. And I lost my job.

Colleagues like me with decades of experience watched their entire lives unravel, and younger staff had their careers derailed just as they were getting started. But worst of all, thousands of survivors of domestic violence and housing discrimination who came to HUD for help every year now had nowhere left to go.

Many people think housing discrimination is something that occurs to someone else. It's not. Housing discrimination is your HOA denying your request to build a ramp or an extension on your home because an elderly family member needs to move in. It's your bank denying a refinance because you're on parental leave. It's your landlord punishing you when you call an ambulance for help. It's your real estate agent telling you you'd be more comfortable in another part of town. And it's your property manager telling you you can't rent a second-floor unit because you have children. When it happens to you, HUD used to be the place you could get help with these issues. Now, that's no longer true.

But it can be again. It just takes people speaking up and doing the right thing. Congress has stood by and let HUD be dismantled. Your protections that used to be bipartisan have been torn away. But Congress works for you. So we will keep doing our best to hold things together from the inside and hope that you will hear our cry for help. Because your voice could make all the difference.

Sincerely,

A former HUD supervisor