Free Republic

At 9:30 p.m. the other night, I was presented with a tragic lesson regarding one of our country's pig-headed policy errors, devised ever so quietly by President Barack Obama in league with progressives all over the country. Most Americans are unaware of this policy -- they never voted for it; they never debated it. The progressives are just imposing it on us through stealth. This is the Democrats' latest advance in democratic process. The other night, I had retired early after a long day of writing when suddenly my wife shook me. She asked me with some urgency if I'd...

President Barack Obama’s administration showed Tuesday that he wants to pressure landlords to ignore the criminal records of would-be renters. One inevitable result is that many law-abiding renters — including many African-Americans — will be forced to unknowingly live alongside felons they wish to avoid. According to Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the “disparate impact” theory of racism says landlords are racists if they have a color-blind practice of excluding all felons from their buildings. That color-bind practice is racist, say progressives, because it has a greater impact on African-Americans than on whites. It has a greater...

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is warning landlords they could face discrimination charges for turning down prospective tenants with criminal records — if the decision has an “unjustified discriminatory effect.” A Republican senator described new HUD guidance issued this week as yet another move by the Obama administration to support convicted criminals. The 10-page document states that “where a policy or practice that restricts access to housing on the basis of criminal history has a disparate impact on individuals of a particular race, national origin, or other protected class, such policy or practice is unlawful under the...

The Obama administration released a warning Monday telling the nation’s landlords that it may be discriminatory for them to refuse to rent to those with criminal records. The Fair Housing Act doesn’t include criminals as a protected class, but the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) says refusing to rent based on a criminal record is a form of racial discrimination, due to racial imbalances in the U.S. justice system. For instance, while blacks are about 12 percent of the U.S. population, they are about 36 percent of the prison population. Hispanics are also overrepresented behind bars, though to...

The tiny house movement has taken America by storm, in part because our economy is in the toilet. People are striving to reduce their expenses by embracing minimalism. They’re breaking free from the corporate grind because, as I’ve always advised, they are learning to live with less and radically reducing their expenses.But, these days in America, you are sharply admonished when you try to live your life outside of the strictures of the 9-5 world. Is it any surprise that the government is now taking steps to limit our ability to drastically reduce our expenses? They always seem to...

The Obama administration has started its push to expand low-income housing into “higher opportunity areas.” The Department of Housing and Urban Development last week announced a “landmark” settlement agreement with Baltimore County that will serve as a catalyst to “promote housing mobility” and “address residential segregation.” The goal is to move low- and very-low-income people out of the city and into the suburbs. …

"For rent: Downtown apartment, 2 bedrooms. Includes organic garden space, hot tub, great backyard. You can bring your dogs if they have references as good as yours. If voting for Donald Trump, do not call." This ad appeared in The Nickel, a free paper in Grand Junction — and even before the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel published an article about it on Saturday, landlord Mark Holmes received push-back from fans of Donald Trump by way of ugly voicemail messages.

"For rent: Downtown apartment, 2 bedrooms. Includes organic garden space, hot tub, great backyard. You can bring your dogs if they have references as good as yours. If voting for Donald Trump, do not call." This ad appeared in The Nickel, a free paper in Grand Junction — and even before the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel published an article about it on Saturday, landlord Mark Holmes received push-back from fans of Donald Trump by way of ugly voicemail messages. And that's not to mention the comments that have appeared in posts about the ad that have appeared on conservative websites, some of...

Landlord Refuses To Rent Apartments To Anyone Who Supports Trump... GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (CBS4) – A landlord in Grand Junction is not breaking the law by refusing to lease an apartment to anyone who supports Donald Trump for president. According to The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, Mark Holmes is renting out a two-bedroom apartment on Main Street, but he refuses to rent to anyone who supports Trump. The ad prompted people who don’t agree with his tactic to leave hate messages on Holmes’ voicemail. “I don’t know what to do anymore about what’s going on in this country,” he...

...U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv The U.S. Embassy in Israel is currently in Tel Aviv. Cruz wants to move it to Jerusalem, Israel's "once and eternal" capital.Commerce DepartmentIn a piece for the National Review, Cruz said shuttering the department would "close the congressional cookie jar" and promote free trade.Education DepartmentAnother standard line from Cruz: "U.S. Department of Education, which should be abolished." Cruz is a states' rights guy -- he wrote his college thesis on the 10th Amendment -- and wants to give control of schools to states or localities....Energy DepartmentCruz has said the country needs an "energy renaissance." .......

The political left has been trying to run other people’s lives for centuries. So we should not be surprised to see the Obama administration now trying to force neighborhoods across America to have the mix of people the government wants them to have. There are not enough poor people living in middle class neighborhoods to suit the political left. Not enough blacks in white neighborhoods. Not enough Hispanics here, not enough Asians there. Nowhere in the Constitution does it grant the federal government the power to dictate such things. But places that do not mix and match people the way...

DALLAS - By most accounts, census tract 166.05 is not a particularly desirable place to live. Tucked between two major highways in southwest Dallas, the neighborhood is characterized by clusters of ramshackle, one-story houses, huge swaths of vacant land and big warehouses and storage centers. More than 40 percent of people living in the census tract have incomes below the poverty level, a proportion that more than doubled since 2000, according to U.S. Census data. Crime rates and levels of slum and blight are also high, according to the Dallas-based housing advocacy group the Inclusive Communities Project. Such placement "perpetuates...

The political left has been trying to run other people's lives for centuries. So we should not be surprised to see the Obama administration now trying to force neighborhoods across America to have the mix of people the government wants them to have. There are not enough poor people living in middle class neighborhoods to suit the political left. Not enough blacks in white neighborhoods. Not enough Hispanics here, not enough Asians there. Nowhere in the Constitution does it grant the federal government the power to dictate such things. But places that do not mix and match people the way...

...Earlier this year, the federal agency - Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced the "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule," (AFFH). This is Barack Obama's most radical assault on American citizens and local governments...

Coinciding with the mass release of federal inmates, the Obama administration is spending $1.7 million on a “re-entry program” to ease the transition from prison and ordering public housing facilities not to reject tenants with criminal records.The goal is to reduce barriers to public housing, employment and educational opportunities by promoting rehabilitation and reintegration for the formerly incarcerated, the feds explain in an announcement. A key component of the program is a joint venture between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to help public housing residents expunge or seal their criminal records....

It's sad watching most Republican candidates promise to make cuts in federal spending without ever actually telling us where the cuts would occur... All that changed last night, however, when Ted Cruz called for the elimination of the Departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Commerce, and Education, as well as the IRS. The liberal media will be focusing on the fact that he mentioned eliminating Commerce twice. I prefer to focus on the merits of what he has announced. The Department of Energy. We have a Department of Energy that generates no energy. Instead, the DOE distributes nearly...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The Department of Housing and Urban Development provided a $9.4 million loan guarantee to renovate an apartment complex here eight months after the owner convinced the county to value the complex at just $3.8 million, a Watchdog.org investigation found. The loan for Apollo Village Apartments defaulted and the property was foreclosed on in 2012 with HUD losing as much as $4.5 million on the deal, public trustee records show. Pete Sepp, president of the National Union of Taxpayers, said these government programs put a substantial amount of taxpayer money at risk and should be eliminated. ......

Every cloud may not have a silver lining, but Westchester County has just found a big one in a legal ruling that will cost it $5 million in federal funds. The case turns on the Housing & Urban Development Department’s effort at social engineering to end what it claims is rampant housing discrimination in Westchester. The cloud: The Second Circuit Court of Appeals said that, to get HUD’s money, West­­chester must play by HUD’s rules in complying with a 2009 agreement to build affordable housing in upscale communities. The silver lining: The judges also said, “There has been no finding,...

If your town is taking HUD housing dollars, diversity, in the form of third world refugees, is on the way Posted by Ann Corcoran on September 6, 2015 I’m old enough to remember the time when Rep. Mo Udall wanted the federal government to control all land use decisions (zoning) in America (yes, he really did!) and the Left has been angling for that power for all the decades since. Udall’s mission, of course, was to protect the environment from developers (as one of its goals), Obama has another mission—to fundamentally change America by changing the people and will actually...

Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing may be an attempt to create balanced living patterns. Rather than remove discrimination, AFFH leverages it to codify oppression Local rule died in America on July 8, 2015. With it passes the rights of rural and suburban communities to decide their own futures. The trigger was the final 377-page ruling from HUD called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing[ia] that attempts to remove discrimination and achieve balanced and integrated living patterns. As one blogger beams, “What could possibly be wrong with helping low-income families to move into better neighborhoods?” In this case, everything. AFFH is reminiscent of the...