Obama Administrations' "21st century approach to fair housing"

[Jolie Rouge]

Who’s up for mapping ‘diversity data’ in every U.S. neighborhood?
By Doug Powers • July 22, 2013 11:31 PM

Next year, my oldest son is starting college and will major in either mechanical or aerospace engineering. However, I’m thinking we might want to reconsider and switch his major to social engineering, because that field is going to be the only viable career option if we keep allowing maniacs like these to stay in charge: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/huds-new-fair-housing-rule-establishes-diversity-data-every-neighborhood-us


To ensure that “every American is able to choose to live in a community they feel proud of...” HUD has published a new fair-housing regulation intended to give people access to better neighborhoods than the ones they currently live in.

The goal is to help communities understand “fair housing barriers” and “establish clear goals” for “improving integrated living patterns and overcoming historic patterns of segregation.”

“This proposed rule represents a 21st century approach to fair housing, a step forward to ensuring that every American is able to choose to live in a community they feel proud of – where they have a fair shot at reaching their full potential in life,” said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan.

Read the entire article and all of Donovan’s quotes here. http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/huds-new-fair-housing-rule-establishes-diversity-data-every-neighborhood-us Wow. That guy’s so prog-nuts that I can’t believe he hasn’t been promoted to the EPA.

In all honesty, I’d be ok with trying Donovan’s idea — provided the first communities “every American is able to choose to live in” starts with the neighborhoods of John Kerry, Eric Holder, Shaun Donovan, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and all the rest.

What say you, Obama administration?

(cue crickets)


**Written by Doug Powers http://michellemalkin.com/2013/07/22/whos-up-for-mapping-diversity-data-in-every-u-s-neighborhood/


comments

Anyone want to bet that the mapping will include political preference?

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If you like your home you can keep your home . . . maybe.

I can see how this will be used to "profile" neighborhoods and if they don't fit the Feds idea of integration will be sued and forced to build "affordable" housing and make it available to those who THEY say should be allowed to live there.

Haven't they figured out the lesson of Detroit? When you move criminals and marginal illiterates into a neighborhood, those who have intelligence and obey they law will MOVE OUT.

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HUD wants to give more people access to better homes aka here they come for more of your tax dollars to spend on the lazy again. This has shades of that failed program of yore called Urban Renewal! Must be this administration's intent to spread the Racism around to all.

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Once again the imbeciles in Washington just dont get it. The neighborhoods that they say are not safe or appropriate for a person to reach their potential aren't built that way. The people make up the neighborhood, not the other way around. The problems must be resolved by the people with the problems. The victim hood argument is a dead end.

Last night on O'Reilly, Bill OReilly, in his externded talking points, called out the race baiters, the instigators (including Obama) and the black community on all of the blame others nonsense in a way that Ive always hoped somebody finally would, but never did before.. You can like or dislike O'Reilly, but as of last night his stock went up with me, because he laid it out 100%, with common sense, and passion that the blame lies with the personal choices by the people of the black community, and not with the white community. Here is the link to it. It is really worth watching.

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/index.html

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The housing bust the democrats did already caused that in my neighborhood. I moved to a better side of town after all the thugs who Barney Frank forced the "too big to fail" banks to give out risky loans to, lost their houses (you can't buy a 600k house on SSI, morons) ended up in section 8's in my area of town. They displaced all the illegals who originally had those section 8's too. I wonder where they went?

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When people are given housing for nothing, the property goes to crap. What is a really interesting success is a building in Dallas that was going to eventually be demolished.

The owners allowed a group of locals (mostly homeless if I recall) to move in IF they agreed to maintain it and keep it drug/crime free.

Since the 'experiment' began the residents have self-governed the building. Anyone that breaks their strict rules is out on their ass.

My point is, they had a vested interest in the building, therefore they maintained it well and took pride in it. Compare that to the projects elsewhere.

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This is merely the principles which conservatives have learned from experience or reading history. My dad said I could have one of those trail bikes if I went to work mowing lawns and shoveling snow. Then my friends dad's just gave them one... and they wrecked them in no time. Mine stayed like new until I traded up the next year and the next.

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Agenda 21.

[Jolie Rouge]

"Today we have almost as many people living in poverty
- and that is around 46 Million -
as at any time in the last sixty years.
We have the highest rate of childhood poverty
of any major country,
and that is somewhere around 22%
We have more income and wealth inequality
than any other major country ON EARTH.
And - astoundingly - between the last study I've seen
between 2009 and 2011, all of the new income
- ALL OF THE NEW INCOME -
created in this country
went to the top 1%.

-- Bernie Sanders

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/p235x350/1005705_577550388964160_919064118_n.pnghttps://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/p320x320/1013047_10151545649108473_755230675_n.jpg

[Jolie Rouge]

Friedman truth! John Stossel shreds government programs with one tweet-quote

Posted at 10:13 am on July 25, 2013 by Twitchy Staff


John Stossel ✔ @FBNStossel

"Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program." - Milton Friedman


1:03 PM - 24 Jul 2013

http://twitchy.com/2013/07/25/friedman-truth-john-stossel-shreds-government-programs-with-one-tweet-quote/

[Jolie Rouge]

Regionalism: Obama’s Quiet Anti-Suburban Revolution
By Stanley Kurtz July 30, 2013 10:12 AM

The consensus response to President Obama’s Knox College speech on the economy is that the administration has been reduced to pushing a menu of stale and timid policies that, in any case, won’t be enacted. But what if the administration isn’t actually out of ideas? What if Obama’s boldest policy initiative is merely something he’d rather not discuss? And what if that initiative is being enacted right now?

A year ago, I published Spreading the Wealth: How Obama Is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities. There I described the president’s second-term plan to press a transformative “regionalist” agenda on the country. Early but unmistakable signs indicate that Obama’s regionalist push is well underway. Yet the president doesn’t discuss his regionalist moves and the press does not report them.

The most obvious new element of the president’s regionalist policy initiative is the July 19 publication of a Department of Housing and Urban Development regulation broadening the obligation of recipients of federal aid to “affirmatively further fair housing.” The apparent purpose of this rule change is to force suburban neighborhoods with no record of housing discrimination to build more public housing targeted to ethnic and racial minorities. Several administration critics noticed the change and challenged it, while the mainstream press has simply declined to cover the story.

Yet even critics have missed the real thrust of HUD’s revolutionary rule change. That’s understandable, since the Obama administration is at pains to downplay the regionalist philosophy behind its new directive. The truth is, HUD’s new rule is about a great deal more than forcing racial and ethnic diversity on the suburbs. (Regionalism, by the way, is actually highly controversial among minority groups. There are many ways in which both middle-class minorities in suburbs, and less well-off minorities in cities, can be hurt by regionalist policies–another reason those plans are seldom discussed.)

The new HUD rule is really about changing the way Americans live. It is part of a broader suite of initiatives designed to block suburban development, press Americans into hyper-dense cities, and force us out of our cars. Government-mandated ethnic and racial diversification plays a role in this scheme, yet the broader goal is forced “economic integration.” The ultimate vision is to make all neighborhoods more or less alike, turning traditional cities into ultra-dense Manhattans, while making suburbs look more like cities do now. In this centrally-planned utopia, steadily increasing numbers will live cheek-by-jowl in “stack and pack” high-rises close to public transportation, while automobiles fall into relative disuse. To understand how HUD’s new rule will help enact this vision, we need to turn to a less-well-known example of the Obama administration’s regionalist interventionism.

In the face of heated public protest, on July 18, two local agencies in metropolitan San Francisco approved “Plan Bay Area,” a region-wide blueprint designed to control development in the nine-county, 101-town region around San Francisco for the next 30 years. The creation of a region-wide development plan–although it flies in the face of America’s core democratic commitment to local control–is mandated by California’s SB 375, the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act of 2008. The ostensible purpose of this law is to combat global warming through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. That is supposedly why California’s legislature empowered regional planning commissions to override local governments and press development away from suburbs into densely-packed urban areas. In fact, the reduction of greenhouse gases (which Plan Bay Area does little to secure) largely serves as a pretext for undercutting the political and economic independence of California suburbs.

Essentially, Plan Bay Area attempts to block the development of any new suburbs, forcing all population growth over the next three decades into the existing “urban footprint” of the region. The plan presses 70-80 percent of all new housing and 66 percent of all business expansion into 150 or so “priority development areas” (PDAs), select neighborhoods near subway stations and other public transportation facilities. This scheme will turn up to a quarter of the region’s existing neighborhoods–many now dotted with San Francisco’s famously picturesque, Victorian-style single-family homes–into mini-Manhattans jammed with high-rises and tiny apartments. The densest PDAs will be many times denser than Manhattan. (See the powerful ten-minute audio-visual assault on Plan Bay Area at the 45-55 minute mark of this debate. http://marin.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?publish_id=adbf39d7-1b7f-1031-8b21-673bf20d68e3 )

In effect, by preventing the development of new suburbs, and reducing traditional single-family home development in existing suburbs, Plan Bay Area will squeeze 30 years worth of in-migrating population into a few small urban enclaves, and force most new businesses into the same tight quarters. The result will be a steep increase in the Bay Area’s already out-of-control housing prices. This will hit the poor and middle class the hardest. While some poor and minority families will receive tiny subsidized apartments in the high-rise PDAs, many others will find themselves displaced by the new development, or priced out of the local housing market altogether.

A regional plan that blocks traditional suburban development, densifies cities, and urbanizes suburbs on this scale is virtually unprecedented. That’s why the Obama administration awarded the agencies behind Plan Bay Area its second-highest “Sustainable Communities Grant” in 2012. Indeed, the terms of the administration’s grant reinforce the pressure for density. The official rationale behind the federal award is “encouraging connections” between jobs, housing, and transportation.

That sounds like a directive to locate new residents–poor and minorities included–in existing prosperous communities. In fact, HUD’s new emphasis on “connecting” jobs housing and transportation does more. In practice, bland bureaucratic language about blending jobs, housing, and transportation pressures localities to create Manhattan-style “priority development areas.” The San Francisco case reveals the administration’s broader intentions. Soon HUD and other agencies will begin to press localities directly, rather than through the medium of California’s new regionalist scheme. Replicating Plan Bay Area nationwide is the Obama administration’s goal.

The Enactment of Plan Bay Area was wildly controversial among those who managed to learn about it, yet went largely unnoticed in the region as a whole. One of the chief complaints of the plan’s opponents was the relative lack of publicity accorded a decision with such transformative implications. Critics called for a public vote, and complained that the bureaucrats in charge hadn’t been elected.

Another theme of critics was that “the fix” seemed to be in from the start. Input was largely ignored, opponents claimed, and public forums offered only the illusion of consultation. Although it’s gone largely unreported, that accusation is far truer than even the opponents of Plan Bay Area realize.

Here’s where the Obama administration comes in. Not only does acceptance of the administration’s $5 million grant make it next-to-impossible to de-densify Plan Bay Area, but the grant itself helps to fund “grassroots” supporters of the plan–leftist groups dedicated to radicalizing the scheme still further.

The administration’s “sustainable communities” grants generally require recipients to “partner” with local leftist community organizations. Opponents of Plan Bay Area often outnumber supporters at public meetings. Yet such supporters as are present–groups like TransForm, the Greenbelt Alliance, Marin Grassroots, and East Bay Housing Organization–are funded (or slated to be funded)with the help of the same federal grant that backs up the bureaucrats in charge.

Press accounts of the Plan Bay Area controversy generally say nothing about the financial interest that “non-profit” “grassroots” organizations have in passage of the plan, or about pressures on the bureaucrats in charge to maintain their government-mandated “partnerships” with these community organizations. So when opponents of Plan Bay Area complain about officials simply going through the motions of public consultation, they’re right. The deck is stacked, the fix is in. By way of the federal grant, many of the “grassroots” groups that support Plan Bay Area are actually partners of the decision makers (the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments). The Obama administration’s role in all this, while generally unnoticed, is substantial.

[Jolie Rouge]

If you complain that the regional bureaucracy behind Plan Bay Area undercuts democracy and local control, you’ll be told that local governments retain full authority over land-use within their jurisdictions. In reality, Plan Bay Area subverts that control, and the Obama administration plays a role here as well. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (one of the two agencies in charge of Plan Bay Area) doles out state and federal transportation assistance. Now that Plan Bay Area has been formally approved, MTC can withhold billions of dollars in federal aid from suburban jurisdictions that refuse to densify, leaving local bridges and highways in disrepair. One of the core goals of the Obama administration’s Sustainable Communities Initiative is to use federal transportation aid as a stick to force regionalist planning on unwilling suburbs.

Recalcitrant suburbs can also be brought to heel by lawsuits claiming violations of federal fair housing law. California’s SB375 facilitates such suits by placing the burden of proof on local jurisdictions accused of housing discrimination. Such legal claims are often brought by leftist community organizations of the type currently funded through the Obama administration’s grant.

When criticism of Plan Bay Area reached a crescendo in suburban Marin County–the center of public opposition to the plan–the bureaucrats pared back their demands for densification in a few resistant municipalities. Obama’s HUD responded by charging that failure to assign more multifamily housing to suburban jurisdictions could violate federal fair housing law. So what looks like a softening of Plan Bay Area’s demands on a few suburban municipalities may ultimately be reversed. By publicly declaring suburban non-cooperation with Plan Bay Area a potential violation of federal housing law, and by funding organizations that could sue to bring resistant suburbs into compliance, the Obama administration is serving as a key enforcer of this controversial scheme.

All of which returns us to HUD’s controversial new regulation expanding the obligation of recipients of federal aid to “affirmatively further fair housing.” When HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan announced that rule change, he acknowledged that it wasn’t really focused on preventing “outright discrimination and access to the housing itself.” The Obama administration is using traditional anti-discrimination language as a cover for a re-engineering the way we live. The real goal is to Manhattanize America, and force us out of our cars.

The Plan Bay Area precedent makes it clear that HUD will use data on access to housing, jobs, and transportation to press densification on both urban and suburban jurisdictions. With the new HUD rule in place, municipalities will be under heavy pressure to allow multifamily developments in areas previously zoned for single-family housing. The new counting scheme, which measures access to housing, jobs, and transportation, will simultaneously create pressures to push businesses into the newly densified areas, and to locate those centers near transportation hubs. In effect, HUD’s new rule gives the federal government a tool to press ultra-dense Plan Bay Area-style “priority development areas” on regions across the country.

HUD’s new rule also allows the creation of regional housing consortia. Although the choice to join such regional housing partnerships would technically be voluntary, the administration will be able to use the same combination of legal threats and funding leverage we’ve seen in San Francisco to pressure municipalities to join the consortia.

Over the next few years, select Regional Planning Grants funded under the Obama administration’s Sustainable Communities Initiative will be issuing regional development plans guided by the same philosophy that informs Plan Bay Area. So even in states without California-style regionalist legislation in place, a federally-funded structure with the potential to override local control, block suburban development, and force densification will be created. The Obama administration’s goal is to use legal and financial carrots and sticks to press Plan Bay Area clones on regions across the country through its federally-funded Regional Planning Grant program. The new HUD rule will be folded into this broader strategy. (I lay out the structure, philosophy, and history of that strategy in Spreading the Wealth.)

When Secretary Donovan announced the sweeping new HUD rule, he said: “Make no mistake: this is a big deal.” He’s right. Yet the mainstream press has ignored the change, as well as the broader story behind it. Recognizing the politically explosive nature of its regionalist plans, the Obama administration does little to connect the dots for the public at large. Above all, the president himself avoids this issue, although it’s deeply embedded in his administration’s policies.

Obama isn’t actually out of bold ideas. They’re simply too controversial for him to discuss. The time has come for a national debate on the Obama administration’s regionalist policies.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/354734/regionalism-obamas-quiet-anti-suburban-revolution-stanley-kurtz

comments

Okay, I could believe that Obama is using HUD rules to get more Dem voters living in more conservative and GOP leaning suburbans in order to muddle the GOP voting base of congressional districts as much as possible.

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Good point. About spreading their voters into more conservative districts. Funding leftist "community" groups with tax money is icing on the cake.

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I'm beginning to think more and more that the extremist agenda on the left isn't so much design to promote Progressive causes as it is to establish one party rule over the United States. Every action they take, from getting half the people of government programs, to discouraging marriage, to urbanization, to illegal immigration is designed to increase the Democrat voter base.
I'm afraid the Democrats really have taken lessons from their philosophical brethren, the communists, and even more afraid they'll be successful unless Americans wake up.

[Jolie Rouge]

Everything old is new again. It's the Community Reinvestment Act all over again...this is how we got here in the first place! And, of course...ANOTHER DATABASE!

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/08/obama-administration-using-housing-department-to-compel-diversity-in/

[Jolie Rouge]

Living in the Lap of Luxury:
Wait Until You See the Obama’s Rumored New House
July 22, 2014 By Jennifer Burke

Was Chicago merely a stepping stone for Barack Obama’s political career? In that city, domestic terrorist Bill Ayers helped launch his career. Michelle Obama was given a $300K position created just for her and dissolved once they moved to D.C. He has rarely gone back to the city in which he rose from community agitator to President of the United States will little real world experience and no qualifications to assume the Office of the Presidency. In fact, the areas of Chicago where he organized the community are no better off now than they were then. In fact, they’re worse.

Given that, one would think that Obama would want to return to the city that he called home before becoming President to continue to agitate, organize, or whatever it is he did. But, since becoming the Democrat nominee for president in 2008, he has become accustomed to living the glamorous life. He parties with Jay-Z and Beyonce, counts George Clooney as a friend, and loves traveling to California to play on expensive golf courses while chastising the people about their water usage.

Rumor has it that, after they leave 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Barack and Michelle Obama will be moving to the posh, gated community called Rancho Mirage in California. While the Obamas deny it, local real estate agents claim that the Obamas are indeed in escrow on a home within a neighborhood where Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, and Bing Crosby once lived.

Make no mistake, the area and the homes are still beautiful, pristine, and expensive. The $4.35 million custom home was, according to the L.A. Times, built in 1993. http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/hot-property/la-fi-hotprop-barack-obama-20140721-story.html The 8,232 square foot estate is located on 3.29 acres resting on a hillside. It has a gym, 4 bedrooms, and other ‘over the top features including a pool with a 20-foot waterfall, a rock lagoon, two spas, a misting system and a putting green.”

One home on the property simply isn’t enough for Barack Obama. It also has a 2,000 square foot casita with 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms.

But, don’t worry. The Obama’s are still down for the struggle of the little people and will continue to rail against the evil rich as they hobnob and live among them. In other words, they will continue to do exactly what they do now. View all the pictures HERE. http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/hot-property/la-fi-hotprop-barack-obama-20140721-story.html

Do you think the Obamas are hypocrites for railing against the rich while hobnobbing with them?

http://www.tpnn.com/2014/07/22/living-in-the-lap-of-luxury-wait-until-you-see-the-obamas-rumored-new-house/