WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration has dropped for at least two years a requirement that cities and agencies getting federal housing money demonstrate how they intend to better promote racial and income integration with new housing or other projects.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development says the delay will help local officials deal with the rule's complex technical requirements. Fair-housing and civil rights groups, however, say they fear it will lead to eventual suspension of the Obama-era rule, called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.

If so, they said, it would mark a setback for the cause of eliminating disparities in areas where many Americans live and raise their children -- disparities that in turn can strongly influence opportunities.

"Americans strongly believe that a zip code should not determine a child's future and that everyone - regardless of their race or national origin, the language they speak, or whether they have children or have a disability - should have access to the opportunities they need to succeed," said a statement from Shanna L. Smith, president and CEO for the National Fair Housing Alliance. "But we are falling short of achieving that goal. Actions taken over many years by HUD, other government agencies and the private sector have left us more segregated than we were 100 years ago. That has led to concentrated poverty and weaker communities and undermines our prosperity.

"We need HUD to enforce this important rule, not suspend it."

Critics of the rule say it amounted to social engineering because it could help put subsidized housing in neighborhoods where there is none, removing an element of homeowner choice and private investment in the name of furthering a liberal ideal of equality. President Donald Trump's housing secretary, Ben Carson, has been among the critics, telling the Washington Examiner in July that HUD should "reinterpret the rule."

Carson said he believes in fair housing, but he doesn't want "extra manipulation and cost."

The rule required local officials to use newly available data and mapping tools that could accurately pinpoint patterns of segregation, making clear how residents are divided not only by incomes and race but also by access to public transit, high-performing schools and jobs. The information was to be used to address how to change those patterns as new housing money is awarded.

The data would not change current housing patterns. But it would guide future decisions in how cities, counties and housing agencies spend HUD money. To ignore the data and the patterns, advocates and the Obama administration said when finalizing the 2015 rule, was to abdicate the mission Congress gave to HUD under the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

But HUD said in a Federal Register notice Friday that the data tools it has rolled out were technically complex, resulting in errors and the need to ask some local governments or agencies to resubmit their data. The New York Times first disclosed this delay late last week.

Civil rights groups say they don't buy the delay was driven by data complexity, because relatively few submissions -- 49 altogether -- had even come in at this point.

HUD had established rolling deadlines for submitting these reports. Those deadlines will now be forced back to Oct. 31, 2020, at the earliest, and some cities and housing agencies might not face submission deadlines for several years after that.

The Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, for example, would have faced its first deadline in 2018. But CMHA and other government entities, including Cuyahoga County and the cities of Cleveland and East Cleveland, decided it would make more sense to work together to evaluate area housing, income and related patterns. They planned to designate Cuyahoga County as the lead agency, and the county's deadline wasn't until 2020 anyway, said Jeffrey Wade, associate general counsel for CMHA.

It is unclear what the new deadline will be for this joint submission, but it could mean at least a two-year extension if the rule is merely delayed and not killed.

"One of the things that is important to us is that our focus on fair housing wasn't driven by any particular HUD mandate," Wade said. Rather, it was driven by an underlying philosophy of striving to provide fair housing.

When HUD released the data tools, cleveland.com used them in 2016 to examine housing patterns in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. The conclusion was hardly surprising: The area is severely segregated by income, race and other factors.