Newsday reporting revealed HUD withdrew its own finding that Hempstead, NY housing authority discriminated against disabled, Black residents

Newsday reported on August 20, 2026, that HUD's director of compliance and disability rights, Andrew Hill, had notified the Town of Hempstead (NY) Housing Authority that the department was withdrawing its own 2024 formal finding that the authority used an illegal point system to discriminate against disabled applicants and to "systematically" further racial segregation on its public-housing waitlist. The exact date of Hill's letter is not stated in available sourcing. The finding, issued in the final days of the Biden administration and authored by then-HUD fair-housing enforcement director Jacy Gaige, had never been made public until a Newsday investigation revealed it, and HUD's withdrawal came within days of that report -- about 600 days after the finding was originally issued.

Hill wrote that the 2024 finding wasn't triggered by a complaint and relied on "regulations purporting to prohibit discrimination effects," and that the department "must conserve its limited enforcement resources by enforcing regulations consistent with the best interpretation of the governing statutes." The housing authority did not request the reversal; a spokesman for the authority said the withdrawal confirmed the authority had "scrupulously adhered to fair housing provisions." A HUD spokesperson declined to explain the agency's reasoning, and the White House referred questions to HUD.

HUD had the option to refer its 2024 findings to the Justice Department or to withhold federal funding from the housing authority; it did neither. Gaige, the finding's original author, called the reversal "a complete, brazen disregard for foundational civil rights laws." A former HUD deputy assistant general counsel for fair housing, State Sen. Siela Bynoe, U.S. Rep. Laura Gillen, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand all issued on-the-record statements calling the withdrawal unprecedented, arbitrary, or unexplained; Gillen noted HUD has also claimed the reversal is not subject to judicial review.

The underlying point system gave residency points to seniors but none to working-age disabled applicants, and gave fewer points to residents of the town's villages with larger populations of color than to residents elsewhere in the town -- a structure HUD's 2024 finding said made it "nearly impossible" for working-age disabled people to obtain public housing and furthered racial segregation. Tamara Bennett-Bryant, a Black, deaf woman who has been on the authority's waitlist for nearly a decade, said she was "disappointed" but would "continue to fight" for her rights.