The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development has accepted a contentious zoning report from Westchester County. It was denied ten times under the Obama administration due to the county's claim that “there is no zoning-related barrier to minority populations.”

The report is part of a settlement based on a judge's 2009 finding that Westchester County violated fair housing laws. According to ProPublica's Joaquin Sapien, all of the proposals submitted under the Obama administration included language denying that Westchester's zoning was linked to segregation. In the most recent draft, those denials were taken out. The Trump Administration accepted the analysis last month.

"The only thing that changed was a handful of phrases had been removed, and those phrases had said previously that the county's zoning laws had no influence whatsoever on segregation. The HUD administration accepted a version of that same document simply with those sentences removed," Sapien told WNYC's Jami Floyd.

The 2009 ruling was widely lauded as a win for fair housing advocates, but it did not immediately bring change to Westchester's segregation problems. In April, a federal appeals court said Westchester "is engaging in total obstructionism" in its inability to satisfy the 2009 settlement.

A spokesman for Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino told ProPublica that the county has successfully built more than 750 affordable housing units required by the judge's order. A HUD spokesman said that the change in administration had nothing to do with the decision to accept Westchester's proposal.