Duty Without Data

Part III

The Administrative Record

The dated paper trail behind the argument, from the 1988 statute to the 2026 renewal notice — every entry backed by an archived primary document.

One collection sits at the center of the Note: Form HUD-27061 (OMB Control No. 2535-0113), HUD’s one-page cross-program demographic form. Its recent sequence is the clearest current illustration of the record gap. Each event below is documented by a hash-verified primary source in the repository’s record directory.

From statute to renewal, 1988–2026

1988. Congress enacts the Fair Housing Amendments Act: the disability duties, an express data-rule authority (42 U.S.C. § 3614a), and an annual reporting duty that names “handicap” among its categories (§ 3608(e)(6)) — all in the same statute.

1989. HUD promulgates 24 C.F.R. Part 121, naming handicap and family characteristics as data categories. The preamble engages the charge that HUD “has failed to generate such data” and responds that HUD “remains committed to that objective.”

2003–2019. The form is approved and periodically renewed as a race-and-ethnicity collection across nine clearance cycles.

2022. HUD proposes updating the form “to collect protected class data as required by the Fair Housing Act and HUD regulations at 24 CFR 121” — a scope that includes disability.

2023. The approved form collects race and ethnicity only, re-grounded in Title VI. The located public record contains no contemporaneous explanation of where the proposed disability categories went. The burden estimate is identical to the broader 2022 proposal.

2026. HUD proposes renewing the narrowed form unchanged, still describing it as collecting “race, ethnicity, and other protected class data” required by the Fair Housing Act, while the approval’s displayed expiration date passes during the renewal’s pendency.

The two-branch posture. The record does not establish that the collection lapsed, and the Note does not claim it did; expiration during renewal processing has happened to this collection before. Either outcome leaves the argument intact: a completed renewal re-ratifies the 2023 omission in a fresh record, and an unrepaired expiration leaves the enacted duties with no approved cross-program collection at all.

Primary sources