“they accuse us of having violated peoples' rights because we followed the law, while every day, they violate peoples' civil rights by ignoring the law.”

Dear America,

If I had to pick one word to describe the last year working in HUD's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, it would be "disdain," for the law, civil rights, and even us. A handful of political appointees with no expertise in fair housing is deciding whose housing rights are worth protecting and whose aren't. Political leaders have consistently taken a narrow view of what the Fair Housing Act bans, limiting what types of civil rights complaints FHEO may investigate, even when their interpretation contradicts recent Supreme Court rulings. People trying to file legitimate discrimination complaints are being turned away, and those who manage to file a complaint based on a disfavored topic or legal theory find their complaints "deprioritized" and ignored. Industry partners who regularly rely on us for advice and input are now unsure of how to proceed, and we no longer know what to tell them.

Even individuals with favored and "prioritized" complaints experience significantly longer delays. FHEO has lost more than 50% of its staff since January 2025, and they are still trying to shrink us. It now takes several more months to move through the intake process, and there are not enough investigators to look into complaints. There is a months-long queue of unsigned settlement agreements and final decisions because the authority to approve these documents was removed from non-partisan career leaders. What little resources we have are instead directed towards politically motivated investigations into Democratic cities who have done nothing but follow HUD's prior directives.

As if intentionally tearing down nearly 60 years of civil rights in housing isn't satisfying enough, HUD's political leaders have made it part of their mission to tear us down. My colleagues and I are the constant recipients of passive aggressive comments accusing us of wrongdoing because we investigated legitimate housing discrimination complaints. Put another way, they accuse us of having violated peoples' rights because we followed the law, while every day, they violate peoples' civil rights by ignoring the law. I guess when your dominant motivation is disdain instead of equality, nothing you do is quite logical.

—A civil servant