Key Trump agency unleashes probe on blue state over potential race-based mortgage aid: 'DEI is dead'

By Fox News · Fox News

The Trump administration's Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced Tuesday that it launched an investigation into a Washington state housing program the agency accused of potentially providing subsidized mortgage assistance to people based on race. The Washington State Housing Finance Commission was alerted this week that HUD's Office for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity would be investigating its Covenant Homeownership Program. The program was established by the state legislature in 2023, which commissioned a report to investigate alleged housing discrimination in the state and how to remedy it. In particular, the program wanted to address racially restrictive housing covenants embedded in the state's history, which became unenforceable following a Supreme Court ruling in 1948 and were voided altogether in 1969. The housing program was launched a year later for first-time homebuyers considered "people of color and other historically marginalized communities." It offered zero-interest loans of up to $150,000 for down payments and closing costs, and the loans did not need to be repaid until the homeowner sold or refinanced the property, according to Seattle King County REALTORS. HUD LAUNCHES CIVIL RIGHTS PROBE INTO MINNEAPOLIS OVER RACE-BASED HOUSING PRIORITIES "Generations of systemic, racist, and discriminatory policies have formed barriers to homeownership for Black, Indigenous, and people of color and other historically marginalized communities in Washington state," Washington Democrat Jamila Taylor said of the bill to establish the program that she helped introduce. "Historically, redlining, racially restrictive covenants, mortgage subsidies and incentives, and displacement have been explicitly outlined practices. To date, racially restricted covenants have been identified in more than 40,000 property deeds across the state." But, according to HUD, applicants in the program do not need to be from low-income areas, as the income ceiling for…