特朗普政府表示将调查波士顿的住房政策是否存在反白人偏见
【中美创新时报2026年12月13日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）特朗普政府周四表示，正在调查波士顿的住房政策是否违反了联邦《公平住房法》，加大了利用具有里程碑意义的民权法律来针对多元化、公平和包容性政策的力度。这项调查是本届政府利用具有里程碑意义的民权法攻击多元化、公平和包容性政策的最新举措。《波士顿环球报》记者妮基·格里斯沃尔德安德鲁·布林克和艾玛·普拉托夫对此作了下述报道。
美国负责公平住房和平等机会事务的助理国务卿克雷格·特雷纳在致波士顿市长吴弭的信中指责波士顿歧视白人，优先考虑有色人种而非所有低收入居民，尤其是在支持住房拥有权和经济适用房开发方面。这项调查表明，特朗普政府的住房官员意图将旨在消除数十年来种族歧视造成的不平等现象的地方项目，认定其具有歧视性。
特雷纳引用了该市自身的种族正义倡议，写道，市政府官员“已着手将‘种族平等’悄悄地融入市政府运作的每一个层面”。
“为了达到这个可疑的目的，波士顿市（以下简称‘市政府’）制定并打算实施歧视性的住房政策，违反了《公平住房法》。”特雷纳写道。
吴弭的发言人在一份声明中驳斥了这些指控，称其为“来自华盛顿的疯狂攻击”。
发言人表示：“波士顿绝不会放弃我们对公平和可负担住房的承诺，我们将捍卫我们为保障波士顿市民住房所取得的进展。”
住房专家告诉《环球报》，援引 1968 年《公平住房法》（该法案旨在纠正美国历史上住房隔离和种族歧视的现象）的做法，与特朗普政府针对大学校园多元化举措的做法如出一辙。
例如，今年早些时候，教育部援引《民权法案》试图迫使大学停止基于种族的招生做法。
民权律师协会的高级律师吉莉安·伦森称，特朗普政府对民权立法的使用和解释“与其引用的权威人士的说法背道而驰”。
伦森说：“很明显，我们所熟知的、自这些机构设立以来我国对公民权利的理解，正遭受攻击和颠覆。这表明特朗普政府正试图破坏数十年来合法且必要的公民权利执法工作。”
特雷纳在致波士顿的信中 并未说明住房和城市发展部（HUD）将调查该市的哪些住房政策。但他 提到了 几个项目，包括吴钊燮政府时期的一项名为“欢迎回家，波士顿”的计划。该计划将利用市政府拥有的空置地块开发经济适用房的合同授予当地少数族裔开发商。 特雷纳还提到了 该市的“反流离失所行动计划”，该计划旨在稳定正在经历士绅化的社区，并帮助长期居民保住家园。
塔夫茨大学城市规划荣誉教授詹姆斯·詹宁斯撰写了该市最新的公平住房研究报告，他 表示，美国住房和城市发展部的这封信读起来像是“旨在打击波士顿市和市长吴钊燮，而不是对该市政策的实质性批评”。
詹宁斯表示，波士顿的公平住房政策并非只为黑人居民和其他有色人种居民创造机会。相反，这些政策旨在为那些至今仍饱受几十年前歧视性住房政策负面影响的社区创造更多机会。
“这是对这座城市的意识形态攻击，他们利用公平住房作为进行这种政治攻击的工具，”詹宁斯说。
几十年来，波士顿的住房政策 在多位市长的 推动下不断重塑。1989年，波士顿联邦储备银行发布了一份具有里程碑意义的报告，该报告发现当地银行系统性地歧视以黑人为主的社区居民，在这些社区发放的抵押贷款数量远少于以白人为主的社区。此后，波士顿的住房政策发生了重大变化。
种族主义联邦住房政策的遗毒至今依然清晰可见。 黑人居民的房屋拥有率约为35%，而白人家庭的房屋拥有率则接近70%。在可获得数据的最新年份——2023年，仅有9.4%的一至四户住宅抵押贷款流向了黑人家庭，而白人家庭则占了65%。
公平住房和反驱逐政策之所以在今天存在，是因为以前的联邦住房政策的连锁反应仍然影响着以前被划为“红线区”的低收入社区的居民 。致力于消除种族财富差距的非营利组织“金融公平伙伴关系”的执行主任汤姆·卡拉汉补充道。
卡拉汉说：“如果你开展一个针对首次购房者的项目，而白人中已有70%拥有自己的住房，黑人中只有35%拥有住房，那么你就必须确保能够接触到那些还没有住房的人，因为这些人才是真正符合项目资格的人群。你必须制定策略来接触到这些人，而这正是这些项目奏效的原因。”
周四发出的这封信是白宫的最新一次反击，白宫经常与进步派市长吴钊燮针锋相对，尤其是在移民问题上。今年早些时候，吴钊燮曾被传唤到国会，就纽约市与移民当局合作的政策接受质询。今年秋天，她以压倒性优势连任，其竞选策略主要围绕反击特朗普展开。
这项调查的消息激怒了长期在波士顿从事住房政策工作的住房和民权倡导者。一些人表示， 特雷纳正在审查的这些政策对于提高该市黑人居民的住房拥有率以及减少曾经猖獗的贷款歧视至关重要。
“看到源于反黑人种族主义的民权法律被扭曲，用来攻击它们原本旨在保护的群体，真是令人愤怒，”马萨诸塞州东部城市联盟首席执行官拉赫桑·霍尔说道。
霍尔说：“令人担忧的是，其他试图解决历史上存在的不公平和排斥问题的市政当局和州政府机构，会因为害怕本届政府的攻击而开始退缩。”
住房和民权倡导者表示，他们对特雷纳将吴的反驱逐计划与“红线区”相提并论感到尤为震惊。“红线区”是 20 世纪 30 年代和 40 年代波士顿盛行的一种做法，当时银行拒绝向联邦政府认定为“高风险”的黑人社区发放贷款。
“我们数十年的研究表明，联邦政府历来是住房政策中种族歧视的最大执行者，”来自东波士顿的民主党州参议员莉迪亚·爱德华兹说。 “‘红线区’政策是联邦政府的政策。所以，在我们了解联邦政府住房政策历史的情况下，他们指责市政府歧视白人，真是荒谬可笑。”
题图：波士顿市长吴弭。M. Scott Brauer/摄影师：M. Scott Brauer/Bl
附原英文报道：
Trump administration says it will investigate Boston’s housing policies for anti-white bias
The probe is the administration’s latest effort to use landmark civil rights laws to attack diversity, equity, and inclusion policies
By Niki Griswold, Andrew Brinker and Emma Platoff Globe Staff,Updated December 12, 2025
Boston Mayor Michelle WuM. Scott Brauer/Photographer: M. Scott Brauer/Bl
The Trump administration said Thursday it is investigating whether Boston’s housing policies violate the federal Fair Housing Act, escalating its efforts to use landmark civil rights laws to target diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.
In a letter to Mayor Michelle Wu, Craig Trainor, assistant US secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity, accused Boston of discriminating against white people and prioritizing people of color, rather than all low-income residents, in its efforts to support homeownership and affordable housing development. The investigation suggests Trump housing officials intend to target as discriminatory local programs that aim to level inequities created by decades of racial discrimination.
Quoting from the city’s own racial justice initiatives, Trainor wrote city officials “have set out to smuggle ‘racial equity into every layer of operations in City government.’”
“To this dubious end, the City of Boston (the City) has developed and intends to implement discriminatory housing policies in violation of the Fair Housing Act,” Trainor wrote.
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The investigation could result in discrimination charges or a referral to the US Department of Justice, he said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Wu rejected the accusations as “unhinged attacks from Washington.”
“Boston will never abandon our commitment to fair and affordable housing, and we will defend our progress to keep Bostonians in their homes,” the spokesperson said.
Housing specialists told the Globe that invoking the 1968 Fair Housing Act — passed to rectify the country’s history of residential segregation and racial discrimination in housing — fits into the same playbook the Trump administration has used to target diversity initiatives on college campuses.
Earlier this year, for example, the Education Department invoked the Civil Rights Act to try to force universities to end race-based admissions.
Jillian Lenson, a senior attorney for Lawyers for Civil Rights, called the Trump administration’s use and interpretation of the civil rights legislation, “antithetical to the very authorities that it cites.”
“It’s clear that civil rights as we know them, and as they have been understood in our country since these offices were created, is under attack and being turned on its head,” Lenson said. “It demonstrates how the Trump administration is trying to undermine decades of legitimate and necessary civil rights enforcement.”
In his letter to Boston, Trainor did not say which of the city’s housing policies HUD would investigate. But he referred to several programs, including “Welcome Home, Boston,” a Wu administration initiative that awards contracts for affordable housing developments on vacant city-owned parcels to local minority-owned developers. Trainor also cited the city’s “Anti-Displacement Action Plan,” which aims to stabilize gentrifying neighborhoods and keep longtime residents in their homes.
James Jennings, an emeritus professor of urban planning at Tufts University who authored the most recent study of fair housing in the city, said HUD’s letter reads like “something meant to stick it to the City of Boston and Mayor Wu, rather than a substantive critique of the city’s policies.”
Boston’s fair housing policies, Jennings said, do not create opportunities exclusively for Black residents and other residents of color. Rather, they are designed to create greater opportunity in neighborhoods still suffering from the detrimental impacts of discriminatory housing policies from decades ago.
“This is an ideological attack on the city, and they’re using fair housing as a tool for this political attack,” said Jennings.
Boston’s housing policies have been reshaped over decades by multiple mayors. Major changes were made in the wake of a landmark 1989 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, which found that local banks were systematically discriminating against residents of predominately Black neighborhoods, issuing far fewer mortgages in those communities than in mostly white neighborhoods.
The legacy of racist federal housing policy is still apparent. The homeownership rate among Black residents is around 35 percent, compared to nearly 70 percent for white households. And in 2023, the latest year for which data is available, just 9.4 percent of mortgages for one to four unit residences went to Black households, while white households accounted for 65 percent.
Fair housing and anti-displacement policies exist today because the ripple effects of old federal housing policies are still being felt by residents in low-income neighborhoods that were formerly redlined, added Tom Callahan, executive director of the Partnership for Financial Equity, a nonprofit that aims to close the racial wealth gap.
“If you’re running a program targeting first-time homebuyers, and 70 percent of white folks already own their home, and only 35 percent of Black folks own their home, you’re going to want to make sure you reach the people who don’t own, because those are definitionally the people who qualify for the program,” Callahan said. “You have to have a strategy to reach those folks, and that’s why these programs work.”
The letter Thursday was the latest salvo from a White House that has often sparred with the progressive Wu, particularly on issues of immigration. Wu was hauled before Congress earlier this year to face questioning about the city’s policies on cooperating with immigration authorities. She was reelected this fall in a landslide after a campaign built largely around pushing back against Trump.
News of the investigation angered housing and civil rights advocates who have worked on housing policy in Boston. Several said the policies Trainor is scrutinizing have been essential for increasing the homeownership rate in the city among Black residents and cutting down on lending discrimination that was once rampant here.
“It’s infuriating to see civil rights laws born out of anti-Black racism twisted to attack the very communities that they were designed to protect,” said Rahsaan Hall, chief executive of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts.
“The fear is that other municipalities and state agencies that are attempting to address a history of inequity and exclusion will then begin to backpedal out of fear of the attacks from this administration,” Hall said.
Housing and civil rights advocates said they were particularly stunned Trainor compared Wu’s anti-displacement plan to redlining, a practice prevalent in Boston in the 1930s and 1940s, when banks refused to issue loans in Black neighborhoods the federal government had identified as “high risk.”
“We have decades of research that demonstrates that the federal government has historically been the greatest implementer of racial discrimination in housing policy,” said state Senator Lydia Edwards, a Democrat from East Boston. “Redlining was a federal policy. So for them to accuse the city of discriminating against white people, when we know the history of the federal government’s housing policies, is laughable.”
