Posted on 06/11/2015 5:12:49 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The Obama administration is moving forward with regulations designed to help diversify America’s wealthier neighborhoods, drawing fire from critics who decry the proposal as executive overreach in search of an “unrealistic utopia.”
A final Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) rule due out this month is aimed at ending decades of deep-rooted segregation around the country.
The regulations would use grant money as an incentive for communities to build affordable housing in more affluent areas while also taking steps to upgrade poorer areas with better schools, parks, libraries, grocery stores and transportation routes as part of a gentrification of those communities.
“HUD is working with communities across the country to fulfill the promise of equal opportunity for all,” a HUD spokeswoman said. “The proposed policy seeks to break down barriers to access to opportunity in communities supported by HUD funds.”
It’s a tough sell for some conservatives. Among them is Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), who argued that the administration “shouldn’t be holding hostage grant monies aimed at community improvement based on its unrealistic utopian ideas of what every community should resemble.”
“American citizens and communities should be free to choose where they would like to live and not be subject to federal neighborhood engineering at the behest of an overreaching federal government,” said Gosar, who is leading an effort in the House to block the regulations.
Civil rights advocates, meanwhile, are praising the plan, arguing that it is needed to break through decades-old barriers that keep poor and minority families trapped in hardscrabble neighborhoods.
“We have a history of putting affordable housing in poor communities,” said Debby Goldberg, vice president at the National Fair Housing Alliance.
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited direct and intentional housing discrimination, such as a real estate agent not showing a home in a wealthy neighborhood to a black family or a bank not providing a loan based on someone’s race.
But HUD is looking to root out more subtle forms of discrimination that take shape in local government policies that unintentionally harm minority communities, known as “disparate impact.”
“This rule is not about forcing anyone to live anywhere they don’t want to,” said Margery Turner, senior vice president at the left-leaning Urban Institute. “It’s really about addressing long-standing practices that prevent people from living where they want to.”
“In our country, decades of public policies and institutional practices have built deeply segregated and unequal neighborhoods,” Turner said.
Children growing up in poor communities have less of a chance of succeeding in life, because they face greater exposure to violence and crime, and less access to quality education and health facilities, Turner suggested.
“Segregation is clearly a problem that is blocking upward mobility for children growing up today,” she said.
To qualify for certain funds under the regulations, cities would be required to examine patterns of segregation in neighborhoods and develop plans to address it. Those that don’t could see the funds they use to improve blighted neighborhoods disappear, critics of the rule say.
The regulations would apply to roughly 1,250 local governments.
Hans von Spakovsky, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, called the Obama administration “too race conscious.”
“It’s a sign that this administration seems to take race into account on everything,” Spakovsky said.
Republicans are trying to block the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule. Before passing HUD’s funding bill this week, the GOP-led House approved Gosar’s amendment prohibiting the agency from following through with the rule.
Though segregationist policies were outlawed long ago, civil rights advocates say housing discrimination persists.
HUD is looking to break down many barriers, but Gosar suggested the regulation would have negative repercussions.
“Instead of living with neighbors you like and choose, this breaks up the core fabric of how we start to look at communities,” Gosar said. “That just brings unease to everyone in that area.”
“People have to feel comfortable where they live,” he added. “If I don’t feel comfortable in my own backyard, where do I feel comfortable?”
Critics of the rule say it would allow HUD to assert authority over local zoning laws. The agency could dictate what types of homes are built where and who can live in those homes, said Gosar, who believes local communities should make those decisions for themselves rather than relying on the federal government.
If enacted, the rule could depress property values as cheaper homes crop up in wealthy neighborhoods and raise taxes, Gosar warned.
It could also tilt the balance of political power as more minorities are funneled into Republican-leaning neighborhoods, he suggested.
The Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on housing discrimination in a related case in the coming weeks. At issue is whether government policies that unintentionally create a disparate impact for minority communities violate federal laws against segregation.
The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs is facing accusations that it makes low-income housing funds more readily available in minority neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods. This promotes segregation, critics argue, by encouraging minorities to continue living in poor communities where government assistance is available.
Court observers say the case could have a profound impact on HUD’s rule.
Well, this is the fastest way to finally END the diversity cult.
The people that support diversity the most often live the furthest from it.
“An HOA controlled community is much like a fascist government on a smaller scale. It is much like a national Socialist government would be except for being voluntary. Relinquishing personal liberty for “security” is a poor but common choice.”
Our first two homes were in HOA controlled communities. Both got very nasty before we sold our homes and moved.
When we moved to this area, we turned down a great looking home in a closed gate area, because the HOAs even dealt with children’s use of swimming pools and tennis courts. We live in a nice area with a limited home owners say so re paint and additions. We have no fees and the so called quasi leaders are good people.
Here in Californicator land, we have an extreme drought. In spite of severe water rationing, some HOAs have tried to enforce keeping green lawn rules. That has been revoked by the legislature and Moonbeam.
We lived off Lucas Valley Road, when we moved to Californicator land, decades ago.
Our new home was a great one. The HOA like others in Lucas Valley became a fascist organization.
That area is infested with left wing elitists, who turned down/prohibited George’s Skywalker expansion.
So his new low cost housing plan is justice.
“As an experiment let’s demand 20 % Section 8 housing in every gated liberal enclave community...”
Then, make them give full scholarships to Ghetto Kids to attend their expensive private schools. Have them pay for the buses and drivers to pick up the kids.
Then, give those kids a clothing allowance at Banana Republic so they will have appropriate clothing.
Finally, give those kids the latest Apple Mac computer, each semester.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3299122/posts?page=61#61
Spot on!
Don’t take govt carrot dangling ‘hooks’.
“I sit on an advisory committee for capital improvement fund allocation in my little township. We met just two days ago, and one discussion was how it is not necessarily worth applying for and receiving grant money from the government to help fund projects. too many strings attached forever. so they can dangle that carrot, or threaten withholding funds, but it might not work. I’m sure we are not the first to figure this out.”
Go to any area that suffered a major disaster like a tornado, hurricane, flood, forest fire or earthquake a few years after FEMA and the other fed/state fascists “fixed” things.
Then, you will see the failure of big and medium government to “fix” anything correctly.
Seems pretty obvious to me that “affordable housing”, insofar it is subsidized by others and as long as we are going to have it, should be put in the most affordable places possible.
Cuz the race war isn’t starting as fast he hoped ...
” Most people when they get grown end up in their status in life, at a level where they are comfortable. Comfortable because it is what they were taught, or more often comfortable because of the level of work and responsibility required to be there.”
We are seeing that where we live and across the country with our friends and relatives in their late 60’s to much later.
Most of us want to live, where we have been living and get carried out feet first rather than sell our homes and live in any retirement center or residence.
Areas like Detroit, Baltimore/DC, Chicago, LA and other liberal hell holes have ruined that dream/hope to safely live out the rest of your life where you have been for decades.
LBJ’s war on poverty declared war on millions of senior citizens of all colors, and the liberals are winning that war.
Those perps/peeps will also find that one has to celebrate and embrace the diversity they have, not the diversity they may desire.
No one represents you better than you!
Watch out for the great grand chillins.
Population density makes a difference. Higher density leads to more interactions and more potential friction. For me < 50 peeps/ mi^2 is about the limit.
None of Obamas G-D- business. This is the dumbest idea he’s ever put forth. Can’t Republican stop this crap?
Is Shared-Equity Housing the Wave of the Future?
"....All across the country, particularly in its most expensive regions, housing developers are becoming increasingly convinced that shared-equity housing can help solve this problem. Designed as a “third way” between owning and renting, shared-equity programs promote the idea that the primary benefit of homeownership isn’t necessarily wealth building, it’s stability.
In shared-equity housing, a third party provides a one-time subsidy to prospective homebuyers, allowing them to purchase a home they wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise. The third party tends to be a governmental housing agency or an affordable-housing nonprofit, but either way, according to a 2010 report by the think tank New America, the effect is to make buying a home easier, “either by lowering the price of the home which a lower-income family is attempting to buy or by reducing the down payment which a lower-income family must bring to the deal.” However, along with that subsidy comes a critical caveat: when the time comes to resell the home, a cap is placed on how much the owners can get for it."...
Works for me...
It’s about time they put up or shut up...
“It could also tilt the balance of political power as more minorities are funneled into Republican-leaning neighborhoods”
I guess its not happening fast enough with the illegal invasion from south of the border.
0bama wants to destroy white middle-class neighborhoods.
I don’t understand why so many people buy in HOA communities, having not read the rules. In Arizona, we’ve lost money on our house, after one slum house led to many more. Next, we’re going to try to move into an HOA, in the hopes of things being tidier and more orderly. Already, we’re meeting new homeowners there who neither know nor care about the HOA rules. Did they not all have to read what was attached to their deeds, and in many states, have to initial each rule?
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