As federal housing rules retreat, cities rewrite their own

Trump’s rollback of fair-housing oversight meets a wave of local reinvention, from D.C. tenant law to Santa Barbara adaptive reuse.

Sep 24, 2025

∙ Paid

Rows of single-family homes in New York. Local and federal housing rules shape where, and how, Americans live. Image by NurPhoto/Getty Images

Housing policy keeps shifting quietly but consequentially. Nationally, federal fair-housing enforcement is faltering, and new data suggests affordable units compete unevenly with market-rate apartments. Cities from…

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