The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a memo yesterday that all department business will be conducted entirely in English – meaning no more live translation or print/digital translated materials. The new policy will disrupt established, successful housing practices, obstruct access to housing and supportive services for people who need it, and violate the civil rights of Americans with limited English proficiency. This is a wasteful and cruel policy change that is meant to appease President Trump and will do nothing to improve housing programs or government efficiency. AIDS Foundation Chicago and the Center for Housing and Health firmly believe that housing is a human right, and that language should not and cannot be used to erect a barrier between people and housing.

The memo states:

To best position HUD, our partners, and the people we serve around our shared American values, please instruct your teams that all HUD communications, correspondence, and physical and digital published materials will be produced exclusively in English and that we will no longer offer non-English translation services. Additionally, please immediately remove all printed or digital collateral about non-English translation services currently displayed in HUD offices or HUD-funded facilities. Printed or digital collateral not in English can be replaced with an English only version. 

We are one people, united, and we will speak with one voice and one language to deliver on our mission of expanding housing that is affordable, helping those in need, caring for our most vulnerable Americans, and revitalizing rural, tribal, and urban communities. 

This appalling shift represents a turn toward exclusion and xenophobia that aligns not with our shared American values, but the values of the Trump administration.

The American Federal Government Employees Local 476 noted in a statement that this policy is not only exclusionary and inefficient – it violates the Civil Rights Act. “Title VI of the Civil Rights Act requires federal agencies & grantees to provide meaningful access to people with limited English proficiency (LEP),” the group wrote. They continued, “[f]or the people HUD serves, this is devastating. Millions of tenants, applicants, & survivors of violence need language access.”

Previously, HUD offered translation in over 200 languages, representing a significant investment in resources that will now be wasted. As many as 25% of Americans do not speak English as their first language, regardless of citizenship status, which can limit proficiency when completing complex forms and navigating information about housing and health care resources. Offering services in other languages helps to make intake processes and service delivery accessible for those seeking services, and more efficient for providers.

Obstructing access to lifelines like housing and health care, racist and xenophobic policies, violating our civil rights, and disrupting existing efficient government functions for the sake of political publicity stunts has become par for the course of the Trump Administration, and this HUD policy change is the latest harmful development. This is not in keeping with our shared American values, but instead a complete inversion of them. There is not one American voice, but many from which our national fabric is woven. There is an increasingly unified call, however, to which AIDS Foundation Chicago and the Center for Housing and Health are adding our voices: to reject this administration and its wasteful, hateful policies.

AFC Communications is not supported by federal funds.