Secretary-Initiated Investigation of the City of Boston

December 11, 2025
By Certified U.S. Mail and Email
The Honorable Michelle Wu
Mayor of Boston
1 City Hall Square, Suite 550
Boston, Massachusetts 02201-2043
michelle.wu@boston.gov
RE: Secretary-Initiated Investigation of the City of Boston, the
Mayor’s Office of Housing, the Mayor’s Office of Economic
Opportunity and Inclusion, and the City of Boston Planning
Department
Dear Ms. Wu:
I am the Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, and I
write to notify you that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (the
Department) is initiating an investigation into the City of Boston’s housing policies,
practices, and programs, as authorized by the Fair Housing Act.1 No person or
entity—the City of Boston included—is permitted to violate civil rights protections in
the name of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI).2 As you are aware, the Trump
Administration is dedicated to protecting the civil rights of all Americans.3 At your
office’s direction, however, City officials have set out to smuggle “racial equity into
every layer of operations in City government.”4 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.5
1 See 42 U.S.C. § 3610(a)(1)(A)(iii).
2 See U.S. Att’y Gen. Memo, “Guidance for Recipients of Federal Funding Regarding Unlawful
Discrimination,” 1 (July 29, 2025).
3 Exec. Order No. 14173, 90 C.F.R. 8633 (Jan. 21, 2025) (“It is the policy of the United States to
protect the civil rights of all Americans and to promote individual initiative, excellence, and hard
work.”).
4 Equity and Inclusion Cabinet, City of Boston, “Racial Justice,”
https://www.boston.gov/departments/equity-and-inclusion-cabinet/racial-justice, (last updated Aug.
27, 2025).
5 See Boston Housing Strategy 2025; A Place to Thrive: Anti-Displacement Action Plan for Boston -
Final 7.09.2025.pdf - Google Drive.
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity
Office of Special Investigations
451 7th Street, SW, Room 5234
Washington, DC 20410

Hon. Michelle Wu
December 11, 2025
Page 2 of 6
The Fair Housing Act and Title VI Prohibit Racial Discrimination.
The Fair Housing Act provides, in pertinent part, that it is illegal “to
discriminate against any person in the terms, conditions, or privileges of sale or
rental of a dwelling, or in the provision of services or facilities in connection
therewith, because of race, color, . . . sex . . . or national origin.”6 It is also illegal to
“cause to be made, printed, or published any notice, statement, or advertisement,
with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference,
limitation, or discrimination based on” the same protected traits.7 Every entity
engaged in “residential real estate-related transactions” is prohibited from
discriminating against “any person” in the availability or “terms or conditions of such
a transaction because of race.”8 Similarly, under Title VI, “no person in the United
States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from
participation in” or “denied the benefits” of “any program or activity receiving Federal
financial assistance.”9
Federal statutory civil rights protections run in tandem with the Equal
Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And the
Supreme Court has made clear that “at the heart of the Constitution’s guarantee of
equal protection lies the simple command that the Government must treat citizens
as individuals, not as simply components of a racial, religious, sexual or national
class.”10 For this reason, the Court has held that “outright racial balancing is patently
unconstitutional.”11
The City of Boston’s Racialist Ambitions Privilege One Group of Americans
Over Another in Violation of the Law.
Notwithstanding these well-established constitutional and federal law
principles, the City has other ideas. In its “City of Boston Assessment of Fair Housing,
January 20, 2022,” the City contends that, in the context of race, fair housing is not
about “the absence of racial discrimination . . . but the presence of deliberate systems
. . . to achieve and sustain racial equity.”12 But this is wrong. The text of the Fair
Housing Act is unmistakably focused on eliminating discrimination in the housing
market and outlining the penalties for engaging in this kind of discrimination.13 In
other words, fair housing is about equal access and the eradication of unlawful
discrimination, not racial equity. The City’s peculiar conception of fair housing calls
to mind Justice Clarence Thomas’s admonition: “Indeed, if our history has taught us
6 42 U.S.C. § 3604(b).
7 42 U.S.C. § 3604(c).
8 42 U.S.C. § 3605(a) (cleaned up).
9 42 U.S.C. § 2000d.
10 Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 U.S. 181,
223 (2023) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).
11 Id. (citation omitted) (cleaned up).
12 City of Boston Assessment of Fair Housing, 181 (Jan. 20, 2022).
13 See Edward Goetz, The One-Way Street of Integration 98 (2018).

Hon. Michelle Wu
December 11, 2025
Page 3 of 6
anything, it has taught us to beware of elites bearing racial theories.”14
To further its racialist theory of housing justice, the City’s Fair Housing
Assessment promises to “target homebuyer outreach” at “Black and Latinx families”
and pressure “banks and mortgage lenders to increase their lending in communities
of color.”15 Accordingly, the assessment tasked the Mayor’s Office of Housing (MOH),
the City of Boston Planning Department (BPD), and the Boston Housing Authority
with collecting racial and ethnic data “to evaluate their work through a racial
equity/social justice lens.”16
The City’s public officials have not only ignored Justice Thomas’s counsel about
racial-theorizing elites but also the Supreme Court’s warning about the “danger” of
“adopt[ing] racial quotas” in housing.17 Indeed, the “Boston Housing Strategy 2025”
announced that “at least 65%” of “opportunities to buy homes through City of Boston
initiatives” should go to “BIPOC” [black, indigenous, or person of color] households.18
The policy is clear: financial housing assistance is not just for all low-income persons
but instead “particularly BIPOC residents.”19 According to MOH, “City resources will
be used to help low-to-moderate-income and/or BIPOC residents put together a down
payment and access financing.”20 This so-called “strategy” promises to continue
leveraging “banks, lenders, developers, real estate agents, and other stakeholders” to
enact this racialist housing plan. For its part, the City of Boston Office of Economic
Opportunity and Inclusion has partnered with private business leaders to award
contracts pursuant to explicit racial and sex-based quotas.21
In League with Aligned Nonprofit Organizations, City Officials Have
Enthusiastically Embraced and Appear to Have Implemented the City’s
Proposed Racial Spoils System.
City officials appear to be implementing these racially discriminatory plans.
For instance, City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune—who previously embraced
your morally repugnant racially exclusionary holiday party for public officials22—
praised the City’s ongoing “Welcome Home, Boston” housing initiative for providing
“intentional investment” in neighborhoods with the City’s favored racial
composition.23 Indeed, the nonprofit “Opportunity Communities” thanked the
14 Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701, 780-81
(2007) (Thomas, J., concurring) (citation omitted).
15 City of Boston Assessment of Fair Housing, 176-178.
16 Id. at 182.
17 Tex. Dept. of Housing and Comm. Aff. v. Incl. Comm. Project, Inc., 576 U.S. 519, 542-43
(2015).
18 Boston Housing Strategy 2025, Executive Summary iii.
19 Id. at 23.
20 Id. (emphasis added).
21 Partnership promises to award 50% of contracting dollars to minority- and women-owned
businesses for White Stadium project – The Bay State Banner.
22 Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s holiday party draws criticism – NBC Boston.
23 Welcome Home, Boston, (last updated July 23, 2025).

Hon. Michelle Wu
December 11, 2025
Page 4 of 6
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Commonwealth Corporation (a quasi-public
agency), and the Massachusetts Housing Partnership (a public nonprofit) on its
website for “direct investment and in-kind support.”24 On the same website, this
organization boasts that its “key initiative”—pursuant to the Fair Housing Act, no
less—is to “employ a racial disparity lens to address housing supply.”25 This “lens”
means “explicit race-conscious marketing and buyer selection” for “buyers of color.”26
The City of Boston Has Taken an All-of-Government Approach to Advance
Its Racially Discriminatory Housing Plans.
In a shameful echo of a darker period in our country’s history, the City’s “Anti-
Displacement Action Plan” appears to revive government-sponsored redlining.27 It
employs explicit racial classifications “to inform planning, outreach priorities, and
decision-making” for the City’s initiatives in residential real estate marketing,
transactions, and public services.28 The first “people” indicator uses the percentage of
“residents who are non-White” to identify “high-risk” areas worthy of public
investment.29 It holds that “[l]ow-risk block groups . . . tend to be whiter” with “higher
proportions” of “native English speaking residents.”30 MOH admits this racialized
map is intended to predict displacement and thereby guide future public investment,
even though its published methodology shows that race has a relatively low
correlation with “displacement” compared to other factors and is redundant to the
nonracial indicators.31 The City suggests that it will use this faulty, race-based tool
to decide where to build “new affordable housing.”32
In the same action plan, MOH contemplates re-establishing a Diversity
Preservation Preference (“DPP”) program.33 This program would give preference to
households “at high risk of displacement” (as determined by the race-based map) in
24 Supporters — OppCo.
25 Homes for equity — OppCo.
26 Id.
27 Redlining is fairly defined as “those lending practices that constitute arbitrary denials of
financing based on geographic location, racial or ethnic considerations, or any consideration
which is not justified on the basis of legitimate, demonstrable economic criteria.” John H.
Gilmore, Redlining & The Fair Housing Act: The Lost Opportunity of Mackey v. Nationwide
Insurance Companies, 34 CATH.U.L.REV. 563, 564 n.1 (1985) (citation omitted).
28 A Place to Thrive: Anti-Displacement Action Plan for Boston - Final 7.09.2025.pdf - Google
Drive, 16.
29 Boston Residential Displacement Risk Map Published Technical Documentation - Google
Docs, 7.
30 A Place to Thrive: Anti-Displacement Action Plan for Boston - Final 7.09.2025.pdf - Google
Drive, 15.
31 Boston Residential Displacement Risk Map_Published Technical Documentation - Google
Docs, 4, 6.
32 A Place to Thrive: Anti-Displacement Action Plan for Boston - Final 7.09.2025.pdf - Google
Drive, 16.
33 A Place to Thrive: Anti-Displacement Action Plan for Boston - Final 7.09.2025.pdf - Google
Drive, 25.

Hon. Michelle Wu
December 11, 2025
Page 5 of 6
accessing new income-restricted housing.34 The plan considers implementing the
preference while acknowledging “legal constraints on authority to use [racial]
preferences like the DPP.”35
Additionally, BPD has long conditioned redevelopment of publicly owned land
on the submission of a DEI plan that requires outlining participation “by people of
color” and “women” as “building tenants.”36 The website boasts of multiple residential
real estate projects operated subject to these City-imposed race-and sex-based
terms.37
The City of Boston Is Not Exempt from Federal Antidiscrimination Laws.
The City has been very public about its intention to discriminate on the basis
of race, while essentially claiming that social justice and racial equity concerns purify
its intentions. But the Supreme Court has long recognized that “[t]he absence of a
malevolent motive does not convert a facially discriminatory policy into a neutral
policy,” nor “alter [its] intentionally discriminatory character.”38 Stated differently,
and to borrow again from Justice Thomas, “government-sponsored racial
discrimination based on benign prejudice is just as noxious as discrimination inspired
by malicious prejudice. In each instance, it is racial discrimination, plain and
simple.”39
Because City officials have brazenly endorsed, outlined, and implemented a
city-wide system for allocating scarce housing resources based on race, color and/or
national origin, the Department’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity
(FHEO), along with FHEO’s Office of Special Investigations, is investigating the City
for unlawful housing discrimination and its compliance with Title VI. Our
investigation will determine whether and how the City has violated or intends to
violate 42 U.S.C. §§ 3604, 3605 and 42 U.S.C. § 2000d and its implementing
regulations.
Upon completion of its investigation, FHEO may file a complaint against the
City for discrimination based on race, sex, and national origin under the applicable
statutes. Based on our findings, FHEO may determine there is reasonable cause to
believe the City has or intends to violate the civil rights of its citizens and, if so, can
file charges of discrimination or refer the matter to the U.S. Department of Justice
34 Id.
35 Id.
36 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Requirements for Public Land Dispositions |
Bostonplans.org,
(DEI Requirements Included in RFPs) (last accessed Dec. 8, 2025).
37 Id. (“Projects that have submitted DEI plans since 2018 include the Blair Lot, Parcel 8, and
the Crescent Parcel in Nubian Square, 22 Drydock, 24 Drydock, and Parcel M in the Raymond
L. Flynn Marine Park, Parcel R-1 in Chinatown, and Building 108 in the Charlestown Navy
Yard.”).
38 International Union v. Johnson Controls, Inc., 499 U.S. 187, 199 (1991).
39 Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200, 241 (Thomas, J., concurring).

Hon. Michelle Wu
December 11, 2025
Page 6 of 6
for enforcement.
Within ten (10) business days of this letter’s date, FHEO will issue initial
requests for information from the City. Please reach out to Robert.A.Doles@hud.gov
with any questions.
Sincerely,
Craig W. Trainor
Assistant Secretary
Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity
cc: Sheila A. Dillon
Chief of Housing for the City of Boston
Director
Mayor’s Office of Housing
Kairos Shen
Chief of Planning
City of Boston Planning Department