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Nearly 40 universities across the nation this year continue to offer neo-segregated dorms and housing opportunities despite a recent demand from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to end race-based discriminatory residential programs.
Research by The College Fix found 39 universities this fall semester operate “affinity housing” or “living-learning communities” geared toward students of a particular race or ethnicity.
Proponents argue such arrangements improve retention rates, foster peer mentorship, and support academic integration for historically underrepresented groups. However, these offerings have been deemed a euphemism for discrimination by the Trump administration. Another term used to describe such arrangements is “neo-segregation.”
Fix research identified 39 universities with one or more such residential programs, but because many universities operate multiple communities, the total number of individual segregated housing programs is substantially higher, coming in at 74.
Of the 39 universities, at least 28 offer housing geared toward black or African students, 17 toward Hispanic or Latino students, 10 toward Native American or Indigenous students, and nine toward Asian students. Several universities offer multiple affinity housing programs.
“I am not surprised that neo-segregated housing persists in American colleges and universities,” said Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, in an email interview with The College Fix.
“Many administrators continue to think that such ‘identity’-based housing benefits students and also serves higher goods in rewarding ethnic solidarity and undermining ‘normative whiteness.’ That is to say, they see both a service to students in reinforcing their insecurities and an ideological purpose.”
A 2019 investigation by the center-right association called “Separate but Equal, Again Neo-Segregation in American Higher Education” found that of universities reviewed, 43 percent, or 75 colleges out of the total, offered segregated residential arrangements.
Wood said it’s a positive that it appears fewer colleges and universities offer segregated housing seven years later, but the problem persists.
“I suspect that some of these institutions still have segregated dorms or residences but have denied having them because they fear the Trump administration will crack down if it learns of them,” Wood said, adding it’s not because the institutions now recognize that such segregation is wrong.
Rather, he said, it’s “because they assess the legal liabilities as too high.”
In a June 23 letter, Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Craig Trainor warned colleges against “institutionalized separatism on the basis of race” and pledged that HUD would “aggressively” pursue institutions that violate federal fair-housing requirements.
The 39 universities that still maintain such housing are at both public and private institutions across the nation, Fix research found.
To determine which universities continue the practice, The Fix conducted keyword searches and then documented and verified the programs through university websites.
Typically, university websites include boilerplate language that all students are welcome to apply, but often add that students who take an interest in the belonging fostered in such communities are especially welcome to apply. Many of the webpages also feature photographs depicting students from the racial or ethnic groups around which the communities are organized.
Cal State Los Angeles offers a “Black living-learning community … designed to enhance the residential experience for students who are a part of or interested in issues of concern to the Black community living on campus,” according to its website.
UC Berkeley offers an African American Theme Program, “aka Afro Floor … Living & Learning Amongst the African Diaspora,” its website states.
The websites appeared to be up to date during the research, conducted in August, although the programs could have been altered more recently and the websites did not reflect the most up-to-date information.
Several residential programs are tied to academic offerings.
Rutgers University, for example, offers students who live in the university’s Latin Images and Identities Living and Learning Community the opportunity to enroll in Latinidades: Identities and Images, an exclusive seminar offered by the university’s Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies.
Trainor’s June letter had specifically cited residential programs and promotional materials at California State University, Los Angeles, and the University of California, Berkeley.
Neither university responded to multiple inquiries from The Fix asking whether the housing programs cited by HUD will continue during the 2026–27 academic year or what criteria the universities use to select residents for the communities.
Legal challenges to affinity-housing programs also are mounting.
In July, the Equal Protection Project filed a civil rights complaint against the University of Minnesota for allegedly operating “four discriminatory university housing programs on its Twin Cities campus that classify students on the basis of race, color, or national origin, in violation of the Fair Housing Act.”
The Fix’s research shows that the University of Minnesota currently operates CASA SOL, a residential community “designed for Latinx students, but open to all”; Charlotte’s Home, “designed for Black women, but open to all”; Huntley House, “designed for Black men, but open to all”; and Lavender House, a community for LGBTQ students intended to provide residents a space “to explore and express their whole selves.”
The Equal Protection Project has since filed civil rights complaints challenging similar practices at other universities, including Northern Arizona University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the University of Nevada, Reno.
MORE: No more ‘separate but equal’: HUD leader tells colleges to end segregated housing
