"Your house is big enough for 13 families, comrade!"
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.
Racism, a pool party in Texas and the Supreme Court
"....The events in McKinney make a stronger argument than could almost any lawyer for why the court should affirm the importance of racially and economically integrated residential areas....."
So—Section 8 housing across the street from the White Hut?
You don’t live in my gated community, and can’t go in a private pool which is paid for by me, and other homeowners who live here. I don’t care. Go away, and go buy a $5 sprinkler to cool down.
“....A Craig Ranch resident told Breitbart Texas that the community supports people’s right to protest as long as they are peaceful, but residents remain fearful of further destruction and criminal mischief in their neighborhood.
Another resident told Breitbart Texas, “This has nothing to do about our community rights, it is about one peace officer, and whether he was right or wrong, it has nothing to do with our subdivision.”
Another resident said “There is no racism in the community. This is a happy, ethnically diverse neighborhood. This is about kids and unruly behavior.”....
Wonder how long it’ll be before Obama starts ordering single family homeowners to give up their spare bedrooms for “poor families?”
“The principal of North Miami Senior High School has lost his job over his Facebook comment defending the Texas police officer caught on video pushing a teen girl to the ground in an incident at a community pool.
Alberto Iber’s comment had defended the officer seen in a video pushing a 15-year-old girl to the ground and drawing his gun on other black teens following a pool party in McKinney, a Dallas suburb....”
The real barriers are drug use, substance abuse, breeding without marrying, income from government checks rather than working and an entrenched gang banger culture which preys on all of the foregoing.
I can show them scores of neighborhoods in flyover country which lack these self-created barriers, have functional schools, employed intact families, low crime rates and, more often than not, even lower incomes. Why do you suppose that is?
Obama is already wasting around $1T a year of our children's and grandchildren's money, just for political payoffs to his corrupt supporters. This project would take the level of waste to $4T a year and still not solve the "problem" that Obama sees in his tiny little mind.
Build section 8 housing in my neighborhood, and I'll leave, and the home values will evaporate. Build better schools, parks, libraries, and grocery stores in Baltimore, and they will torch the buildings during their next protest, while using the parks to deal drugs. I don't see either outcome as worth the burden the resulting debt would impose on the next generation.
“Here we go again.
Not content with just the scalp of a Miami principal who dared express an opinion on McKinney police officer David Eric Casebolt’s actions during last week’s pool party, the liberal mob has a new target.
Meet Karen Fitzgibbons, a 4th grade teacher out of Lubbock, Texas whose comment on an ABC News article on the incident has twerps furious and calling for her to be fired:.....”
Current and former Presidents never have to worry bout crime. We should make his kids go to public schools. Obama should not play golf, but only do inner city sports, in trash littered parks, and ride the bus.
Section 8 coming soon to (ruin) a nice community near you.
I’m sure all the pols in favor of this won’t mind low-income housing next to their homes, so let them start with their neighborhoods.
> 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.
Jennifer Lopez grew up poor and so did many others like Celine Dion and Shania Twain who are now very successful. Growing up poor made them who they are and it made them want to never live in poverty again. Giving people nice things when they are respectful is like buying candy fora hild everyday; just stop one day and watch their reaction . You’ll find that all you did was made them self-entitled, disrepectful little brats.
"Your house is big enough for 13 families, comrade!"
> 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.
Jennifer Lopez grew up poor and so did many others like Celine Dion and Shania Twain who are now very successful. Growing up poor made them who they are and it made them want to never live in poverty again. Giving people nice things when they are ungrateful and disrespectful is like buying candy fora hild everyday; just stop one day and watch their reaction . You’ll find that all you did was made them self-entitled, disrepectful little brats.
An HOA controlled community is much like a faschist 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.
“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?”
So much racialist illogic, so little time. If I am free to live among those I like, then I am equally free to not live among people I don’t like. Even if my motives or leanings are racist. Of course if I choose, for example, to live in a neighborhood where people tend *not* to park cars up on blocks or deal drugs or play loud music, then I am rejecting some kind of imagined diversity.
And by the way, should I feel comfortable in my own backyard, that’s racist. Isn’t it? Or at least privileged. Other people, you see, will figure this stuff out for me.
We have to make sure that crime, disease, violence and general squalor is ‘democratically’ distributed in ALL AMERICAN communities!
I’m glad I live in a VERY modest neighborhood in a very modest home... THIS area is not good enough for any self-respecting, grasping, demanding, ungrateful minority thug ! :)
By all means.
Everyone should plant weeds in their garden.
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