“Housing is safety and stability. When it fails, everything else becomes harder to hold together.”

Dear America,

Every day I speak with people who contact the HUD civil rights office because they believe they have experienced housing discrimination. My job is to listen, review the facts, and determine whether federal civil rights laws may have been violated.

Housing discrimination is not always obvious. Evictions are often legal, but evicting someone because they are pregnant is not. Denying housing to families with children or refusing reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities can violate the Fair Housing Act. My role is to help distinguish lawful housing decisions from unlawful discrimination.

I still carry many of these stories with me after work. I have stayed on the phone with people in tears or struggling to breathe. Others describe being forced from their homes or living in constant fear of harassment. I speak with survivors of domestic violence trying to relocate before their abuser finds them, and parents worried that one more setback will leave their children without housing.

Housing is safety and stability. When it fails, everything else becomes harder to hold together.

One of the most meaningful parts of this work is telling someone their experience may have been illegal and that the government will investigate. That moment restores a sense that the law still matters.

But that work is becoming harder to do.

We have lost nearly half of the staff responsible for fair housing enforcement. Others have been reassigned or left after concluding they could no longer do the work. Meanwhile, complaints continue to outpace our capacity, leaving people waiting months or years for answers.

Even when cases are opened, enforcement is increasingly uncertain. Political leadership is narrowing investigations, limiting evidence considered, and closing cases that would previously have moved forward.

Every administration sets priorities. That is expected. But civil rights enforcement depends on consistent application of the law, not selective enforcement.

—A civil servant