February 6, 2023

Biden Revives Obama’s ‘Affirmative’ Housing Scheme

Limousine leftists just love “diversity,” so long as it doesn’t encroach on their neighborhoods.

A fundamental part of the American Dream is to make sure our kids have it better than we did. Maybe that’s a bigger house, or a safer neighborhood, or a better school district. Maybe it’s all of the above.

Or maybe it’s none of the above, if Joe Biden gets his woke way.

At issue is the Obama-era social engineering scheme called “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing,” which was ultimately and rightly scuttled by the Trump administration, only to have been resuscitated by Biden’s Department of Housing and Urban Development. And if you don’t think this affects your smallish community, think again. It affects some 1,250 jurisdictions that receive federal community-development funds as well as the nation’s more than 3,000 public-housing authorities.

“Fifty-five years after its passage and signing,” said Joe Biden’s handlers, “we are still working to realize the Fair Housing Act’s promise to end the legacy and persistence of discrimination and inequities in our housing system. That’s why during my first week in office, I directed the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to implement the Fair Housing Act’s requirement to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing.”

First off, the 1968 Fair Housing Act’s mission was to eliminate discrimination in housing — to ensure that no one who can afford to rent or buy in a particular location is denied that opportunity due to his race. Team Biden, though, has perverted that laudable aim to instead ensure that every community has the correct socio-economic mix, and that each neighborhood has a Democrat-approved ratio of black families to white families.

“This is an important step forward,” said Obama Biden, “to ensure every community does its part to expand equity in housing and to fulfill our promise of a nation of opportunity and equity for all.”

Notice that Biden twice used in this single sentence the fundamentally Marxist word “equity” instead of the fundamentally American word “equality.” Anyone who thinks these two words are synonyms had best start paying attention. Whereas the latter means equal opportunity, the former means equal outcome.

We might call this the Steph Curry Rule after the virtue-signaling NBA star who endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 but apparently doesn’t endorse his policies — or at least not the ones that might encroach on his $30 million mansion or come anywhere near his children’s schools.

“We hesitate to add to the ‘not in our backyard’ (literally) rhetoric,” he and his wife wrote in a letter to community officials last week, “but we wanted to send a note before today’s meeting. Safety and privacy for us and our kids continues to be our top priority and one of the biggest reasons we chose Atherton as home.”

As we wrote last week in our Executive Summary, “It’s yet another example of leftist elites who have no problem calling for others to sacrifice their safety and security for leftist political causes, while refusing to subject themselves to those same demands.”

Maybe when the Currys give their support for some Section 8 housing across the street in Atherton, or the Bidens do the same thing in Rehoboth Beach, or the Obamas in Martha’s Vineyard — maybe then we’ll take them seriously.

As for this onerous “Affirmative Housing” rule, columnist Howard Husock has it right:

HUD would better focus on its original mission: making lower-income neighborhoods better. Although it never figured out how do that either. AFFH is just the sort of expansive rulemaking that should be challenged in court by a state attorney general or local mayor. Or overturned by Congress through the Congressional Review Act. It should not go unchallenged.

Indeed, when it comes to socially engineering our neighborhoods, the Democrats’ track record isn’t a good one.

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