HUD Scrubs Toxic Content from Hijacked Portal

[Mejappz]

*** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ***​

HUD SCRUBS TOXIC CONTENT FROM HIJACKED PORTAL

VENTURA, Calif. (March 28, 2025) – A web portal run by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as a clearinghouse for misinformation and to promote crony business relationships has now been purged of much of its most toxic content. More needs to be done.

The portal, known as the “HUD Exchange,” connected lawyers and crony nonprofits with potential plaintiffs for shakedown lawsuits and to spread divisive conspiracy theories. The portal, which appeared to have been taken over by HUD around the start of the pandemic, was originally operated by a tiny federal agency whose stated mission was to provide resources for wounded, ill and injured service members and their families. HUD somehow wrested control of it.

Under Housing Secretary Scott Turner, many malicious web pages have been removed. They include:

• A page called “Collateral Damage: The Consequences of Racial Bias in the Residential Appraisal Process” written by Montana-based attorney Peter Christensen. It stokes a conspiracy theory that the nation’s 70,000 state-licensed appraisers are vulnerable to racial bias in their work. Christensen operates a prepaid legal plan bundling DEI courses in California with guaranteed legal representation for attendees should they be ensnared in a HUD investigation. He is the co-author of a misleading study funded by a HUD-affiliated federal agency. The study, which the Government Accountability Office found had been paid for with unauthorized funds, can be viewed here. Christensen’s page on the HUD Exchange was once here. It’s now gone.

• The writings of attorney Stephen Dane, who extracts settlements from purported discriminators. He, too, is a co-author of the deceptive report. He holds presentations for other lawyers on how to sue appraisers using career-destroying inferences of discrimination and the use of arcane disparate-impact theory. His now-removed page was here. Unfortunately, HUD never removed its YouTube video promoting Dane here.

• Pages dedicated to promoting a crony organization called the National Fair Housing Alliance, a group that extracts discrimination settlements from public and private organizations looking to avoid trouble. That group also sponsors “baby” affiliated nonprofits that harvest grant money through HUD. The group’s leaders, Maureen Yap, Morgan Williams, Lisa Rice and Scott Chang, were co-authors of the aforementioned report.

• A series of dishonest “personal stories” about the Impact of the phantom issue of appraisal bias. The basis of the stories? Hunches by homeowners that bigotry caused their homes to appraise at a value that failed to facilitate a refinance or sales transaction. The government-run page encouraged parties to connect with so-called "housing counselors" on LinkedIn for further advice. The page was once here.

• A page promoting a conspiracy-theory that the nation’s 70,000 state-licensed appraisers conspired to rob black Americans of generational wealth. Until just a few days ago, the page was found here.

The defanged portal was not just about generating illicit business for cronies. Some of the content was ideologically driven, promoting something called “housing equity,” a form of magical thinking that denies market preferences for top-performing school districts, well-run cities, effective public safety, traffic conditions and proximity to amenities. This world view holds that appraisers are the enemy of progress for reporting on how locational differences affect market value. The thinking shows a deep contempt for free markets.

The portal received an abrupt makeover in April 2024 after its existence was first mentioned in a press release by author-appraiser Jeremy Bagott. All references to the site’s management by the Defense Health Agency’s National Resource Directory were removed from the portal, although online traces from the arrangement remain at the defense-health site.

The sanitation of the web portal aside, HUD has still failed to remove a page intended to pique the interest of disgruntled borrowers and steer them to an email address operated by the aforementioned National Fair Housing Alliance. You can view the malarky here. The page needs to come down.

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Jeremy Bagott, a licensed appraiser and former newspaperman, sends up a warning flare in his 2019 book “Dispatches from the Cosmic Cobra Breeding Farm.” He takes the reader deep inside a tiny Washington, D.C., foundation that has managed to have its copyrighted code of conduct enshrined in federal and state law. All 50 states, even the U.S. territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, now enforce it. The nonprofit, known as the Appraisal Foundation, has parlayed the arrangement into a lucrative publishing cartel. In his journey, the author uncovers a troubling trend deep in the plumbing of government.