Obama set to force affordable housing into affluent communities

[Suzanimal]

President Obama wants to “diversify” wealthy neighborhoods in America, and his administration plans to to force affluent communities to accept affordable housing, such as Section 8.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is set to release new regulations that would set aside taxpayer money to build cheap housing for poor people in richer areas. Under the rules, the federal government would be able to overrule zoning laws of more than 1,200 local governments and force communities to comply.

But on Wednesday, the House move to preemptively limit the power of HUD, now headed up by Julian Castro, a top candidate to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate should she win the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

The House voted 229-193 for a measure that prevents HUD from implementing the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation.

The measure was put forward by Arizona Republican Rep. Paul A. Gosar, who has been a vocal foe of the new regulations.

“As the president reaches the end of his second term, he has made it clear that his top priorities during his waning days are furthering his far-left political agenda by forcing big government programs on the American people. His new AFFH regulation is one of the most far-reaching attempts yet to punish communities that don’t submit to the president’s liberal ideology. 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,” Gosar said in a statement.

“Furthermore, HUD officials shouldn’t be holding hostage grant monies aimed at community improvement based on its unrealistic utopian ideas of what every community should resemble. Local zoning decisions have traditionally been, and should always be, made by local communities, not bureaucrats in Washington DC. I am extremely pleased to see the House put a stop to this attempt by the Obama Administration to control a fundamental aspect of the American dream.”


HUD claims the new rules would simple provide equal opportunity, breaking down barriers that have long been in place. “This rule is not about forcing anyone to live anywhere they don’t want to,” Margery Turner, senior vice president at the left-leaning Urban Institute, told The Hill. “It’s really about addressing long-standing practices that prevent people from living where they want to.”

Stanley Kurtz writes in National Review that the regulation “would be one of the most radical and transformative actions ever taken by the Obama administration.”

“In the early stages, the AFFH rule will mandate the collection of information on the precise racial, ethnic, and income distribution of housing in nearly every census tract in the nation. Once that information has been gathered, escalating pressure will be placed on municipalities across the country to abandon local zoning policies and re-engineer housing stock at local expense. Municipalities will be pressured to join regional consortia that will have the effect of taking housing decisions out of the hands of elected officials and the citizens they represent. And the federal government will pressure localities to build dense housing developments near transportation hubs and business areas,” Kurtz writes.

The measure now goes to the Senate, also controlled by Republicans.The Supreme Court is also set to rule on a separate matter of housing discrimination that revolves around whether local governments are guilty of segregation through their policies.


Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/11/obama-set-force-affordable-housing-affluent-commun/#ixzz3cqSrXwMI
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

[acptulsa]

I thought Obama wanted to enable and sustain mass transit.

There are a lot of cities in the south and west where the rich live behind gates and on at least half an acre each. People stuffed into these places will probably half to walk two miles or more to reach the nearest bus stop.

Frightening to think how far down the rabbit hole we'd be by now if liberals didn't spend so much time and effort shooting themselves in their feet.

[tod evans]

Government's track record with housing is stellar...:rolleyes:

[acptulsa]

Government's track record with housing is stellar...:rolleyes:

They can't even put flood victims in trailers without trying to kill them with formaldehyde.

[randomname]

Rand's budget will probably abolish HUD altogether :)

[Ronin Truth]

There's a major hit on property values, and there goes the neighborhood. :p :rolleyes:

[Brian4Liberty]

AFAIK, they have been doing this for quite a while. Feds will give money to cities or developers if a certain amount of Section 8 Housing is built in new developments.

[Ronin Truth]

AFAIK, they have been doing this for quite a while. Feds will give money to cities or developers if a certain amount of Section 8 Housing is built in new developments.

That happened in Tulsa several years ago. Crime in the area has gone through the roof, and property values close by have fallen into the basement. :mad: Protective high stone walls in neighboring residential areas are still being built.

The "affordable housing" is now a drug an crime infested condemned trash dump, much has been closed and is being torn down.

[DFF]

http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Muh+whit+gilt_c209e4_4712488.jpg

[euphemia]

AFAIK, they have been doing this for quite a while. Feds will give money to cities or developers if a certain amount of Section 8 Housing is built in new developments.

This will not hurt the wealthy. It will hurt the middle class. The old money people here will never see this happen. The people who are upwardly mobile middle class earners will be hurt, because they are buying newer houses in developments where these low-income houses will be built. But you wait. They won't be homes. They will be apartments on the edges of middle class subdivisions.

What has also happened here is the opposite. Very low income familes will lose their homes downtown near the new AAA baseball park, because in addition to the ball field, the city council promised high-end homes. This is right over in one of the few places in town the very poor can actually live in a house. The remaining low income housing is apartments or housing projects.

[Jamesiv1]

If you have money to invest, tax-credit multi-family housing is about to explode. HUD is not issuing any new section 8 contracts - all the new contracts will be tax-credit. Existing sec 8 properties if they want to get renewed must rehab and become tax-credit.

[Dianne]

But not in his neighborhood. http://www.cheatsheet.com/politics/where-will-obama-go-after-the-white-house.html/?a=viewall and http://nypost.com/2015/03/20/obama-plans-post-white-house-with-purchase-of-hawaiian-mansion/ and http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/22/obama-family-set-buy-425m-desert-home-california-r/ . This guy is not doing too badly with his $400,000. per year salary.

[Ronin Truth]

Well why not, why should only the middle class get to have all of the fun? :rolleyes:

[tod evans]

But you wait. They won't be homes. They will be apartments on the edges of middle class subdivisions.


Sounds like feeding grounds.....

[muh_roads]

http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Muh+whit+gilt_c209e4_4712488.jpg

Takes a lot of motivation to be angry like that. Luckily we have the MSM on our side to instigate black vs white debate.

...'er, wait a minute...

"Who cares, whites are racisssss, now get back here...American Idol is on."

[Suzanimal]

Obama admin. lays out new housing rules to fight segregation


New housing rules introduced by the Obama administration will require cities that receive federal funds to scrutinize housing patterns for racial bias. They will also be required to report on those biases and include remedies for reducing segregation.

“This is the most serious effort that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has ever undertaken to do that (reduce segregation),” HUD Secretary Julian Castro told reporters Wednesday. “I believe it is historic.”

Under the new rule, HUD will provide communities with historical data they must use to analyze segregation patterns, areas where race and poverty are concentrated, and access to good schools and jobs. Communities will be required to submit these analyses to HUD, set goals for reducing segregation and track the results.

Where communities consistently flout the law, HUD could possibly withhold a portion of the billions of dollars it hands out in federal funding each year.

“This truly represents a new partnership with cities, one that makes it easier to fulfill the goals of the Fair Housing Act,” Castro told reporters. “Not enough has been done to explain what fair housing does or what it means.”

The Fair Housing Act, passed in 1968, gave everyone equal access to housing regardless of race, color, religion, sex, familial status or national origin. The act was passed four days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., who had led a campaign for “open housing” which exposed how African-Americans had been restricted to slums in northern cities and neighborhoods had been “redlined” by banks that refused to lend to African-American homebuyers.

“As a former mayor, I know firsthand that strong communities are vital to the well-being and prosperity of families,” said Castro in a released statement.

“Unfortunately, too many Americans find their dreams limited by where they come from, and a ZIP code should never determine a child’s future. This important step will give local leaders the tools they need to provide all Americans with access to safe, affordable housing in communities that are rich with opportunity.”

The rule changes respond to recommendations from a 2010 Government Accountability Office report and was a top demand by civil rights groups who said federal enforcement of fair-housing laws had been opaque, difficult for smaller communities to follow, and had been the most fraught frontier of racial progress.

“Housing discrimination is the unfinished business of civil rights,” Sherrilyn Ifill, the President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, told reporters.

“It goes right to the heart of our divide from one another. It goes right to the heart of whether you believe that African American people’s lives matter, that you respect them, that you believe they can be your neighbors, that you want them to play with your children.”

Black and white housing segregation still exists in Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee and New York, but the federal housing agency has pursued some complaints for defying the law.

Westchester County in New York has been in a legal battle with the agency, which is claiming the county misled the government by accepting HUD funding without affirmatively furthering fair housing. A 2009 settlement led to the county agreeing to build 750 new affordable housing units in communities with few minorities. It also agreed to adopt a law banning landlords from discrimination against subsidized tenants. The county missed some of the deadlines of the settlement, though, and HUD began withholding funds. The county has since decided against requesting block grants from the agency, a tactic many see might be employed as the new rules goes into effect.

Other critics, like Republican lawmakers, argue the new housing rule forces communities to integrate even when it is against the will of current and prospective residents.

“This overreaching new regulation is an attempt to extort communities into giving up control of local zoning decisions and reengineer the makeup of our neighborhoods,” said Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Arizona), who has introduced several pieces of legislation that would prohibit HUD from implementing the rule, according to the Wall Street Journal.

http://rt.com/usa/272554-obama-housing-rules-segregation/

[euphemia]

Then they will have to move most of my neighborhood somewhere. Whites are in the minority, and none of us are rich. I guess that means I move, too.

[kahless]

Forced Diversity = White Genocide.

Mind blowing that whites being discriminated against with a high profile campaigns by Progressives to ensure their minority status keep quiet out of fear of being called racists from actual racists.

[euphemia]

I wonder if it has occurred to the President that taking some of the tax and regulatory burden off business might let people earn more, or even some, so they could choose where they want to live. Some people would invest in their current homes and lift then neighborhoods where they are right now.

[Origanalist]

Obama collecting personal data for a secret race database

A key part of President Obama’s legacy will be the fed’s unprecedented collection of sensitive data on Americans by race. The government is prying into our most personal information at the most local levels, all for the purpose of “racial and economic justice.”

Unbeknown to most Americans, Obama’s racial bean counters are furiously mining data on their health, home loans, credit cards, places of work, neighborhoods, even how their kids are disciplined in school — all to document “inequalities” between minorities and whites.

This Orwellian-style stockpile of statistics includes a vast and permanent network of discrimination databases, which Obama already is using to make “disparate impact” cases against: banks that don’t make enough prime loans to minorities; schools that suspend too many blacks; cities that don’t offer enough Section 8 and other low-income housing for minorities; and employers who turn down African-Americans for jobs due to criminal backgrounds.

Big Brother Barack wants the databases operational before he leaves office, and much of the data in them will be posted online.

So civil-rights attorneys and urban activist groups will be able to exploit them to show patterns of “racial disparities” and “segregation,” even if no other evidence of discrimination exists.

OBAMA IS PRESIDING OVER THE LARGEST CONSOLIDATION OF PERSONAL DATA IN US HISTORY.

Housing database

The granddaddy of them all is the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing database, which the Department of Housing and Urban Development rolled out earlier this month to racially balance the nation, ZIP code by ZIP code. It will map every US neighborhood by four racial groups — white, Asian, black or African-American, and Hispanic/Latino — and publish “geospatial data” pinpointing racial imbalances.

The agency proposes using nonwhite populations of 50% or higher as the threshold for classifying segregated areas.

Federally funded cities deemed overly segregated will be pressured to change their zoning laws to allow construction of more subsidized housing in affluent areas in the suburbs, and relocate inner-city minorities to those predominantly white areas. HUD’s maps, which use dots to show the racial distribution or density in residential areas, will be used to select affordable-housing sites.

HUD plans to drill down to an even more granular level, detailing the proximity of black residents to transportation sites, good schools, parks and even supermarkets. If the agency’s social engineers rule the distance between blacks and these suburban “amenities” is too far, municipalities must find ways to close the gap or forfeit federal grant money and face possible lawsuits for housing discrimination.

Civil-rights groups will have access to the agency’s sophisticated mapping software, and will participate in city plans to re-engineer neighborhoods under new community outreach requirements.
“By opening this data to everybody, everyone in a community can weigh in,” Obama said. “If you want affordable housing nearby, now you’ll have the data you need to make your case.”

Mortgage database

Meanwhile, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, headed by former Congressional Black Caucus leader Mel Watt, is building its own database for racially balancing home loans. The so-called National Mortgage Database Project will compile 16 years of lending data, broken down by race, and hold everything from individual credit scores and employment records.

Mortgage contracts won’t be the only financial records vacuumed up by the database. According to federal documents, the repository will include “all credit lines,” from credit cards to student loans to car loans — anything reported to credit bureaus. This is even more information than the IRS collects.
The FHFA will also pry into your personal assets and debts and whether you have any bankruptcies. The agency even wants to know the square footage and lot size of your home, as well as your interest rate.

FHFA will share the info with Obama’s brainchild, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which acts more like a civil-rights agency, aggressively investigating lenders for racial bias.

The FHFA has offered no clear explanation as to why the government wants to sweep up so much sensitive information on Americans, other than stating it’s for “research” and “policymaking.”

However, CFPB Director Richard Cordray was more forthcoming, explaining in a recent talk to the radical California-based Greenlining Institute: “We will be better able to identify possible discriminatory lending patterns.”

Credit database

CFPB is separately amassing a database to monitor ordinary citizens’ credit-card transactions. It hopes to vacuum up some 900 million credit-card accounts — all sorted by race — representing roughly 85% of the US credit-card market. Why? To sniff out “disparities” in interest rates, charge-offs and collections.

Employment database

CFPB also just finalized a rule requiring all regulated banks to report data on minority hiring to an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion. It will collect reams of employment data, broken down by race, to police diversity on Wall Street as part of yet another fishing expedition.
School database

Through its mandatory Civil Rights Data Collection project, the Education Department is gathering information on student suspensions and expulsions, by race, from every public school district in the country. Districts that show disparities in discipline will be targeted for reform.

Those that don’t comply will be punished. Several already have been forced to revise their discipline policies, which has led to violent disruptions in classrooms.

Obama’s educrats want to know how many blacks versus whites are enrolled in gifted-and-talented and advanced placement classes.
Schools that show blacks and Latinos under-enrolled in such curricula, to an undefined “statistically significant degree,” could open themselves up to investigation and lawsuits by the department’s Civil Rights Office.

Count on a flood of private lawsuits to piggyback federal discrimination claims, as civil-rights lawyers use the new federal discipline data in their legal strategies against the supposedly racist US school system.

Even if no one has complained about discrimination, even if there is no other evidence of racism, the numbers themselves will “prove” that things are unfair.

Such databases have never before existed. Obama is presiding over the largest consolidation of personal data in US history. He is creating a diversity police state where government race cops and civil-rights lawyers will micromanage demographic outcomes in virtually every aspect of society.
The first black president, quite brilliantly, has built a quasi-reparations infrastructure perpetually fed by racial data that will outlast his administration.

http://nypost.com/2015/07/18/obama-has-been-collecting-personal-data-for-a-secret-race-database/