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.
It’s happening in suburban areas of Houston. Affordable housing complexes being squeezed in to somewhat affluent areas. What’s next? Cars and country club dues to go with?
By all means, lets spread government spawned misery equally across the land.
That’s not how 0bie and the Libs see it. They have a RIGHT to cool down in your pool ~ as it all goes back to swimming pool segregation. That’s the meme that all of the lefty hosts are using, anyway.
Excellent post.
I'm not sure liberals have thought this through either. For example, Malibu if full of rich liberals... some very vocal and left-leaning Hollywood types like Barbara Streisand.
I wonder how it would fly if they started building low-income housing in the middle of Malibu.
I'm not sure liberals have thought this through either.
That's the main reason conservatives get blamed for everything.
1. Liberals propose a new, utopian program, without thinking through it.2. Conservatives, accustomed to planning ahead, point out the inevitable downsides and ask for scrapping of or revisions to the proposal.
3. Liberals, who still haven't thought through it, "feel [criticized, oppressed, targeted, etc] and defend the proposal, calling conservatives "bigoted."
4. Proposal is rammed through by liberal double-dealing and lies, assisted by complicit, lying media hysteria and demonization of conservatives.
5. Everything the conservatives feared comes true; liberals blame conservatives because, after all, they asked for revisions, and the failure is "clearly" the fault of the revisions. Or, failure is because conservatives tried to block it, because they are bigots, and bigotry made everything turn out badly, just because! Or...[insert your choice of lies and excuses here].
Spot on.
Not enough $$. There is NEVER enough money for ANY lib utopian plan.
At some point a Republican president will have to deal with the national debt, which is over $18 trillion now. He/she will have to make some hard choices, make cuts to programs and so on in order to save the overall economy. That president will be hated and mocked for doing so, and no one will ever blame Obama for his contributions to the problem.
My wife has been asking that very question for years. I used to laugh at her and tell her that was absurd.
I no longer do.
I was thinking that when reading SWO's excellent link in post 71, about the regrets of two academics who studied the results of the Section 8 scheme that saw cities tear down projects and disperse the poor to neighborhoods all over the cities, which resulted in new crime patterns that are harder than ever to predict, prevent or police. What struck me was the complete lack of planning, programming and funding for the social needs of people thrust out of poverty into a middle-class area with middle-class behavioral expectations that the migrating poor would prove unable to meet. It was, pardon me for saying so, like invading a Middle East country and expecting them to adopt democracy.
One of the most stupid stupidities of the progressives is their conceit that it is only money that separates the poor from the rich. They recoiled in horror from the "cultural imperialism" of Christian missionaries in the pre-welfare era going into troubled or impoverished areas and trying to teach a religious ideology of humility, responsibility, respect, hope and love. Now, progressives push their ideology of consequence-free sex, child neglect, baby-killing, entitlements and victimhood, and cannot see that they are destroying the people they think they are helping. And that's just the do-gooders. The callously uncaring elites fully understand that the do-gooders are merely serving the elites' purposes of capturing Democrat votes.
Spot on.
Notice that George considers moving the poor people into the rich neighborhood as payback for their rejection of his studio. Novel idea once used by Texas monied class that bought a Hyannis Port home near the Kennedy's compound and installed a poor black family, anyone remember how that turned out?
I foresee a lot of empty units in that complex until they go full subsidized housing.
The first thing I thought of when reading the headline and article was :
.... those pool party crashers.
BTW, that neighborhood in McKinney —is— racially diverse already.
Because they are White people.
Sssh! Don’t give them any ideas.
“Wonder how long it’ll be before Obama starts ordering single family homeowners to give up their spare bedrooms for “poor families?”
Shooting for the lowest common denominator here.
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