Posted on 11/05/2009 7:10:53 AM PST by Uncledave
Revolt in Westchester After a coercive housing settlement, angry voters toss out their county executive. 4 November 2009
Other issues, especially taxes, no doubt ranked high in the minds of Westchester County voters, who last night in a stunning upset threw out incumbent county executive Andy Spano in favor of Republican challenger Rob Astorino by an impressive 58–42 margin. But it didn’t help that county residents felt strong-armed by the federal government and private litigants into a controversial lawsuit settlement on low-income housing that cuts deeply into the county’s tradition of suburban home rule on development issues—or that Spano reacted to voter discontent by suggesting that critics of his housing plans were racist.
Announced in August, the settlement calls for the county over seven years to override local zoning and other rules to force the construction of at least 750 low-income housing units, most to be located in relatively affluent towns. The intention is to increase the number of poorer minorities living in these areas. A federal judge had sided with plaintiffs’ complaints that the county had accepted federal funds but had not lived up to its talk of combating purported “segregation” based on income. (Affluent blacks and other minorities have long been welcome in many of the communities under scrutiny; as the Manhattan Institute’s Howard Husock points out, blacks are at most slightly underrepresented in towns like Scarsdale, Harrison, and Pound Ridge compared with their overall presence in the affluent income brackets typical of those towns.) The Obama administration took credit for arm-twisting the county into going along: “This is historic, because we are going to hold people’s feet to the fire,” said HUD deputy secretary Ron Sims, who added: “It’s time to remove zip codes as a factor in the quality of life in America.”
Read that last line again: it’s pretty startling. To remove zip codes “as a factor in the quality of life” in a nation—so that 10455 (South Bronx), 91731 (El Monte, California), and 48210 (Detroit’s west side) have exactly the same implications for quality of life as 10021 (New York’s Upper East Side), 90210 (Beverly Hills), and 48009 (Birmingham, Michigan)—would require extreme, indeed utopian, ventures into social engineering. It’s certainly a result unachieved by Scandinavian social democracy (in which cities like Stockholm and Copenhagen include both chic, desirable neighborhoods and neighborhoods that are neither), or for that matter by the harder tyrannies of the Left. Even 50 years after Castro’s seizure of power in Cuba, Wikipedia describes the Miramar neighborhood as “an upscale district . . . one of the better parts of Havana.”
What kind of social engineering might be called for to remove zip code as a quality-of-life factor differentiating gritty Yonkers from leafy Yorktown, or crime-plagued Mount Vernon from calm Mamaroneck? The New York Times lays it out:
. . . the county admitted that it has the authority to challenge zoning rules in villages and towns that in many cases implicitly discourage affordable housing by setting minimum lot sizes, discouraging higher-density developments or appropriating vacant property for other purposes. Westchester agreed to “take legal action to compel compliance if municipalities hinder or impede the county” in complying with the agreement.
Not surprisingly, voters across Westchester reacted with alarm as to what this would mean. Aside from the abridgment of home rule, a requirement to accept dense development would probably bring new costs (the introduction of water and sewer systems, school expansion), which would be unlikely to be offset by property tax collections on the new developments. Planning to use a vacant parcel for new softball fields, or preserve it as open space? Sorry, but using town property for purposes that town residents favor could put the supervisors in violation of the settlement. And while much was said about how it would make sense to provide housing options for teachers, cops, and other town workers, along with downsizing retirees and others with local ties, the fact is that towns enter a legal minefield when they attempt to earmark low-income housing for those constituent groups. “Fair housing” litigants have repeatedly sued and sometimes won on the theory that such policies are unfair to other poorer people who might want to give the suburbs a try. And indeed, the settlement “requires the county to market the homes aggressively to black and Hispanic residents of the New York City area”—not just those already working or living in the county.
One question in many voters’ minds was whether incumbent county executive Spano, a Democrat, had in fact fought hard against going along, or had caved too readily to what both sides agreed were unprecedented demands (including $10 million for the plaintiffs and their lawyers). After all, the deal offered Spano certain political advantages, including relatively favorable press in both the New York Times and Gannett’s reliably liberal local Journal News, both of which predictably applauded the settlement on their editorial pages. Spano insisted that the county was yielding against its will. At the same time, he used the quiet weeks leading up to Labor Day to steamroll the plan through a compliant board of county legislators. Challenger Rob Astorino called for a slowdown to examine whether the county had really exhausted its options. Spano replied by playing the race card: he said continued delay in approving the settlement would “make us a symbol of racism.”
As it happens, a lot of Westchesterites—residents of a county known for racial liberalism from way back, and which voted for Barack Obama by a comfortable margin—don’t like being talked to that way. Now Spano, despite a well-financed campaign whose online ads were nearly as ubiquitous as Michael Bloomberg’s, and all the advantages of incumbency and union backing, is packing for his departure. Astorino, just recently written off as a long shot, will be moving into his office. And officials of other local governments have a new reason to fight, not just go along meekly, when the social engineers and lawyers come knocking at their door.
Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, posts as MidWestchester on Twitter, as well as under his own name.
The federal plan to move gangbangers into every neighborhood continues.....
This is a federal government mandate? And some freepers call my country "Canuckistan"? You people have some real problems.
Liberals eating liberals. Oh why can’t it be like the good old days when everyone could just bash the South?
FedGov is already practicing social engineering via its Section 8 housing.
They bought up an empty compartment building in my neighborhood and promptly stuffed it full of illegal aliens. Now the adjacent park is home to nightly soccer games, whose participants speak entirely Spanish.
Our crime and vandalism have increased.
Thanks, FedGov.
Liberals are voting for this.
The settlement also stipulates that Westchester must market this “affordable housing” to non-whites who live outside of Westchester county.
Oh, and the amount of the settlement is currently $52MM.
veddddy intristing...
the Rats have infiltrated down to the county level, trying to push their socialist utopia everywhere.
GLAD TO SEE THE PUSHBACK, WESTCHESTER!!!!!!!!
On to the next battle....
The ironic thing is that most of these low income units will be constructed in the limousine liberal towns of Scarsdale, Chappaqua, Briarcliff Manor, etc. Other than Asians, these towns have very few "people of color," poor people, or Republicans.
The funny thing is, despite these affluent towns, Westchester already has large populations of poor and working class minorities in Yonkers, Mount Vernon, Peekskill, Ossining, and Port Chester, among other towns. Many of these border affluent areas like the one's mentioned above. The one last barrier are the school systems, which are segregated according to town (ie not consolidated county-wide as is the case in Florida). This battle in effect pitches the Marxist-Leninist "levellers" against the brie and Chardonnay liberals who still want to protect the schools they pay five digits in property taxes for.
Insult people and they vote against you — who knew?
Illegals don’t qualify for section 8 under any circumstances. Unless there is severe corruption at your local welfare office, I don’t see how this is possible. Most section 8 officers in the NY are native born blacks and (to a lesser extent) native born Hispanics, and the vouchers they distribute reflect those demographics.
Many of the brie and Chardonnay liberals send their brats to private school. Their goal is not to protect the public schools for the benefit of their own children, but to protect the public schools for the benefit of their real property values.
Liberals want to FORCE “suburbanites” to experience “multiculturalism”.
They think it’s unfair that some can move to a relatively crime-free neighborhood,
so they’re going to move the crime to that neighborhood.
They think, I believe, that the problem with crime is that the neighborhood is poor, and if they just put these people[/criminals] in a better neighborhood, they won’t commit crimes.
1 Cor 15:33
Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.”
Nowhere in the Bible does it say that good company affects bad character.
L
When my grandfather grew up in Washington Heights in northwest Manhattan, it was a pleasant, middle class neighborhood. The problem isn’t the facilities, it’s the residents who can make a Hell of a Heaven, whether in Manhattan or Westchester or Vermont or San Juan.
From experience, when blacks become a majority in a previously white neighborhood, they deliberately drive out whites.
Most black families that make the choice to buy a house in the suburbs
are equally vehement about keeping out the section 8 rats as the white people are.
I find this hilarious. The vast majority of these people are probably all in favor of such policies.
Somewhere else.
Nice to see the limousine liberal get hoist by his own petard once in a while.
Four years of the Obama administration seems likely to cure even the most nutty upper-middle-class Lefty of his love for social engineering, by making it apply to his own neighborhood.
Believe it or not, Washington Heights is slowly gentrifying, with the process largely complete west of Broadway. East of Broadway still has “issues”, but is in much better shape than it was in the 80s/early 90s.
In my experience this is a true statement. Some of the most motivated members of our Neighborhood Watch are the black families who bought their way into our part of town. They have some very colorful terms for the Section 8 gang bangers who worm their way in, none of which can be posted on this forum or used in polite society.
I grew up in Yonkers. Social engineering damn near destroyed it. It’s still not back to what it was.
And it never will be.
It’s about class, not skin color. If you can afford to live in Chappaqua or Pound Ridge or Scarsdale, good for you. Nothing should be given to someone who otherwise cannot afford a certain town.
People who live in Section 8 or other subsidized housing do not take care of it. Drive past any public housing in New York, and it looks like a third world nation. Drive through Scarsdale, it’s a whole other story.
Yonkers was always kind of dumpy, even when it was largely white. You had places like Crestwood that were so-so, but anyone would laugh if you compared it to Scarsdale or Pound Ridge. Yonkers is, as it always has been, an extension of the Bronx.
Yonkers was always kind of dumpy, even when it was largely white. You had places like Crestwood that were so-so, but anyone would laugh if you compared it to Scarsdale or Pound Ridge. Yonkers is, as it always has been, an extension of the Bronx.
that is ahelluva quote but so true with a few exceptions...
Watch it or Joey (Big Joe)Giampa will come for you trash talking his domain.
(does he still run it?)
Yonkers was for me just something I drove thru coming up HH to Sawmill on my way to Upper Nyack when Palisades were backed up.....looked working class white to me which down here today would be Wi$$erland.
Corruption in the welfare office ! I'm shocked, shocked I tell you !
There is not a single black, white or asian face in all those compartments. No language is spoken except Spanish. The nightly soccer games are all in Spanish.
Here in Houston the mayor (running on the 'rat ticket for senator) refuses to anything about illegals. Several other 'rat politicians take the same tack. Within four blocks of my house they infest a large parking lot, hanging out there looking for work. The cops could pick up 100 at a whack. Hell, they could go through that compartment building and get 200 or so. But the 'rats want them as voters.
I want them deported, lock, stock and anchor babies.
Then came a famous court case in the 1980s, whereby a liberal judge decided that Yonkers' segregated neighborhoods constituted an infringement on the civil rights of blacks and Latinos. He didn't merely order bussing, but instead ordered the city to come up with a plan to build public housing in white neighborhoods. The Mayor at the time (Wasiczko?) refused, and was fined every day that he refused to comply. It nearly bankrupted the city, and led to white flight in neighborhoods that were even rumored to received public housing.
As a half-eyetie myself, be careful when you hear nostalgic Italian-Americans referring to their old nabes as "beautiful." They may not have been crackhead havens, but they were not exactly New Canaan either. The truth is, most couldn't wait to have a large house in the suburbs, and not have to work the sh-t jobs their parents did just to keep their heads above water. I never understood the nostalgia for being a schlepp myself.
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