In September, Congress averted a partial government shutdown
when it voted to continue appropriations at 2015 levels, but those only go through
December 11, when another omnibus spending bill or continuing resolution will
be needed.
As such, that means there is still time for Congress to
consider attaching policy riders to the legislation that limit the size and
scope of government, and deny President Barack Obama funds to carry out his
agenda.
First on the list should be the July 2015 Department of
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) rule that will force local communities to
build evenly distributed neighborhoods based on income and race.
In 2012, HUD dispersed about $3.8 billion of
these grants to
about 1,200 municipalities. To continue
receiving those grants, zoning plans will now need federal approval that they
met with the government’s racial guidelines.
According to the rule, “This final rule, and Assessment
Tools and guidance to be issued, will assist recipients of Federal funding to
use that funding and, if necessary, adjust their land use and zoning laws in
accordance with their existing legal obligation to affirmatively further fair
housing [emphasis added].”
These are racial and income housing quotas, plain and
simple. HUD is saying that your community’s zoning plan might be discriminatory
because if it has too many nice homes to live in that poor minorities cannot
afford. Since when is living in a nice neighborhood racist?
In the meantime, local zoning rules only determine what can
be built where, not who can live in a community. Real housing discrimination,
that is, refusing to rent or sell based on race, has been illegal since the
1960s.
The housing market determines what houses will cost based
primarily on demand. Can’t afford your dream home? Sorry, that’s not
discrimination, that’s economics.
But under the new rule, HUD will use that very type of
statistical analysis to say if your neighborhood is racist, and condition
receipt of federal grant monies on that determination.
Which is why Congress needs to act. In June, it passed an amendment by U.S. Rep. Paul
Gosar (R-Ariz.) to the Transportation and HUD appropriations bill that would
bar the department from using any funds to carry out the rules. Companion
legislation in the Senate by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), “Local Zoning Decisions Protection
Act of 2015,”
would do the same and also deny the use of funds to “design, build, maintain,
utilize, or provide access to a Federal database of geospatial information on
community racial disparities or disparities in access to affordable housing.”
Language similar to the Lee-Gosar defund could easily be
attached to the upcoming spending bill for FY 2016.
The question Republican lawmakers should ask themselves with
regards to defunding the rule — which most folks truthfully have not even heard
of — would Obama shut down the government to impose his racial housing quotas?
No, he probably wouldn’t. And even if he did, he’d have to
explain what was so important to merit a veto. He’d have to make a case that
there is rampant housing discrimination when there is none. That he intends, in
essence, to build high-density, low income housing in your neighborhood.
Is that the debate he really wants to be having? The whole
reason this was done via federal regulation and not the traditional legislative
process is precisely because the politics of it are so toxic. So that you
wouldn’t hear about it.
Republicans should be relishing this debate, and dare Obama
to veto legislation that takes out the HUD rule to redraw every neighborhood in
America that accepts federal money. GOP leaders might say, we just overcame the
last housing bubble that tried to push so-called affordable housing loans on
people who it turns out couldn’t afford it. And now Obama wants to do it again?
It’s a good debate to be had, about what is a responsible
approach to housing, and what is a utopian social engineering experiment with
unintended consequences.
Overall, Congress just needs to remind Obama that it’s your
neighborhood he’s messing with, and act accordingly. This is an issue
congressional Republicans can win on.
Robert Romano is the senior editor of Americans for Limited
Government.
http://netrightdaily.com/2015/10/still-time-to-defund-obamas-racial-zoning-quotas/
No comments:
Post a Comment