The Trump administration has rescinded an Obama-era housing mandate that federal officials say drove up costs and choked off the supply of affordable housing for years.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development, working with the Department of Justice, jointly killed a 2013 policy that let third parties file accessibility-related complaints over original building design flaws indefinitely. Under that rule, current property owners could be held liable for design mistakes made by long-gone original builders decades earlier, even though they had nothing to do with the original construction.
Internal agency data shows the policy forced property owners to spend more than $112 million on accessibility retrofits over the past five years just to qualify for Federal Housing Administration refinancing. HUD says those costs directly reduced the supply of affordable housing.
The new rule ends indefinite liability. The clock on Fair Housing Act design and construction challenges now starts on the date a building receives its certificate of occupancy. Individuals or advocacy groups get a one-year window to file administrative complaints with HUD. Private civil lawsuits in federal court face a two-year statute of limitations from the completion of construction.
Once those windows close, owners are protected from retroactive, building-wide liability tied to the original architectural design. Tenants still keep the right to request reasonable modifications for their own housing needs at any time under existing Fair Housing Act protections.
HUD’s new guidance calls the old policy a massive overreach:
