Obama To “Diversify” Neighborhoods By Federal Takeover Of Local Zoning Laws

 

So now that the President doesn’t have to seek reelection we see the really radical plans coming forth to truly transform America. The latest political grab bag is called “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.” Notice how these Liberal Left power plays have such nice sounding names. Obama always has the word FAIR in there as he is a big promoter of FAIRNESS. As good as it sounds this is just the federal governments usurpation of local zoning laws in order to diversify neighborhoods.

Now this is being treated as something new, a brand new idea that has sprung forth from a former Community Organizer. Nay, Nay. It’s roots stem from UN Agenda 21, where its housing component was often euphemised to SMART GROWTH. As far back as 2009 Scott Strzelczyk and Richard Rothschild writing for American Thinker reported:

“Smart growth is not science; it is political dogma combined with an insidious dose of social engineering. Smart growth is a wedding wherein zoning code is married with government-sponsored housing initiatives to accomplish government’s goal of social re-engineering. It urbanizes rural towns with high-density development, and gerrymanders population centers through the use of housing initiatives that enable people with weak patterns of personal financial responsibility to acquire homes in higher-income areas. This has the effect of shifting the voting patterns of rural municipalities from Right to Left.”

Smart growth plans usurp property rights and constitutional rights. Local officials, at the behest of State Government, revise zoning laws to fit into a “smart code” zoning template. A massive reshuffling of property rights ensues. Farmers may lose subdivision rights; conservation land adjacent to population centers may be rezoned into commercial employment centers; and low-density land in small towns is re-designated as growth area and rezoned to accommodate diverse housing including high-density apartments and condominiums.

Finally, a healthy dose of federal- or state-sponsored housing initiatives is embraced to ensure communities are properly balanced. The net effect of these plans is to create highly urbanized population centers throughout otherwise-rural counties, while simultaneously limiting the availability of land for suburban and estate subdivisions, as these are considered an unsustainable waste of land by Agenda 21 disciples.

Clearly, smart growth plans will impact Americans’ future choices in where and how they live. Furthermore, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other federal and state agencies may attempt to deny grant funds to states and cities that do not adopt smart growth plans.

Conversely, smart growth municipal plans, required by statute, enable municipalities to change zoning laws and engage in other regulatory actions that devalue property, restrict off-conveyances, and otherwise erode property values without payment of any compensation to the property owner.

Agenda 21 is a direct assault on private property rights and American sovereignty, and it is coming to a neighborhood near you.

Back in 2013 Rush wrote:

This mindset doesn’t believe in suburbia, doesn’t like suburbia, doesn’t like the freedom of it, doesn’t like the flight aspect of it.  They want people congregated in the cities.  Stanley Kurtz is exactly right.  Suburbia, by the way, is also an electoral threat to Obama.  You go take a look at where Obama and the Democrats win elections, and it’s deep urban areas, large population centers.  The spread out.  You take a look at that map where you’ve seen county by county and that map is all red.  The map that Bush wins and the map that voted for Romney.  The map of the Continental 48 is all red except for New York, LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Detroit.  Outside of that, this country is red.

Obama doesn’t like all that red.  Liberals don’t like all that red.  I thought Kurtz was honest. It was a little esoteric to make it an election issue, but it was still interesting.

“In a move some claim is tantamount to social engineering, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is imposing a new rule that would allow the feds to track diversity in America’s neighborhoods and then push policies to change those it deems discriminatory.”  So the federal government wants control over the diversity of neighborhoods and they want to define it.  They want to define what proper diversity is and they want the power to somehow engineer it.

“The policy is called, ‘Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.’ It will require HUD to gather data on segregation and discrimination in every single neighborhood and try to remedy it.” Can I tell you this again?  “The policy is called, ‘Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.’ It will require HUD to gather data on segregation and discrimination in every single neighborhood and try to remedy it.” Remedy it?  How?

Now today you have Megyn Kelly talking to Mark Thiessen saying:

And so, Mark, this is being described as something that President Obama has had in the works for years. But has only now found the guts to actually put out there as a housing and urban development proposed final rule because his term is almost done and this is the time to do it. The last thing on the list. Change the neighborhoods.

MARC THIESSEN, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Absolutely. Look. This is what happens when you take a community organizer and put him in the White House. He wants to organize your community from Washington, D.C. I mean, this is an insidious idea. What they’re trying to do is engage in social engineering of local communes from Washington, D.C. They’ll going to take data and collect data on the racial makeup, social makeup, economic makeup of communities and then either bribe or blackmail them into changing their zoning policies. I mean, this is a fundamental assault on freedom, on local government, on the principles that this country was built on.

However, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani isn’t buying it. “The fact is, zoning is a local matter. The federal government doesn’t control zoning. You get a right to zone your area for certain kinds of housing –single family housing, two-family, industrial,” he said on FOX Business Network’s Mornings With Maria adding, “No way that’s going to pass constitutional muster, but Obama has failed constitutional law so often as president, they should take his degree back.”