A Washington County-based organization that enforces an anti-discrimination law in Western Pennsylvania has lost a $425,000 annual grant — part of a wave of federal spending being slashed by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort.
The Fair Housing Law Center, based in Washington, Pa., has received funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development since 2009 to enforce the fair housing provisions in the 1968 Civil Rights Act.
The landmark Civil Rights law, passed by Congress in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, religion, and other factors. It was updated to also prohibit discrimination based on disability and family status.
The Fair Housing Law Center covers more than 30 counties in Western Pennsylvania and four in West Virginia. Center staff learned last month the agency would be losing its grant immediately.
A letter from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, citing President Donald Trump’s executive order creating DOGE, and “at the direction of said Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE),” stated the grant award was over.
“HUD is terminating this award because it no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities,” according to a letter the center received.
The center was in the first year of a three-year grant. An official there said the loss of the funds is completely unjustified.
“There was nothing that we did, in terms of our work product and our work relationship, or responses to the federal government, that gives them any reason to have done this,” said Brian Gorman, executive director of Summit Legal Aid. The Fair Housing Law Center is a project of the nonprofit Summit Legal Aid.
Musk and Trump have portrayed the DOGE cuts as rooting out waste and fraud, though critics have said the initiative seems more focused on spending that, while already authorized, has been opposed by conservatives.
The Fair Housing Law Center collects complaints about potential housing discrimination via a 1-800 number and email, and it conducts tests to check for potential landlord bias. Attorneys with the center can file complaints with HUD, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, or in court. It screens close to 800 cases a year, pursuing about 100 of these a year as cases of potential discrimination.
Gorman said his agency is a good steward of the funds.
“In terms of efficiency, we are extremely efficient,” he said, with the vast majority of funds supporting the center’s staff, which in turn provide services to clients.
“You know, for lack of a better way of saying it, we work our butts off,” Gorman said.
The loss of the funds means the center will have to draw on reserve funds, at least one vacant position will not be filled, he said, and work will likely have to be shifted within the organization to continue to cover fair housing issues.
“It certainly is going to impact the work by … having less staff on fair housing, having less financial resources for fair housing.”
The center is part of a federal lawsuit filed by more than 60 fair housing groups seeking to have the funds restored.
HUD did not respond to a request for comment.
