During his recent address in the Rose Garden, President Donald Trump noted that he intends to put an end to Barack Obama’s fair housing rules that would “abolish the suburbs.”
The president went on an extended commentary during his July 14 comments in the Rose Garden, and in one segment he mentioned Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rules, which would put the federal government in the driver’s seat in planning and approving construction of housing in every sector of the country.
The AFFH rule, proposed in 2015 by Julian Castro, who was then Obama’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, was met with stiff resistance the moment it was unveiled.
National Review’s Stanley Kurtz was shocked by the rule and called it “massive government overreach.” He added that it that it “gives the federal government a lever to re-engineer nearly every American neighborhood — imposing a preferred racial and ethnic composition, densifying housing, transportation, and business development in suburb and city alike, and weakening or casting aside the authority of local governments over core responsibilities, from zoning to transportation to education.”
Kurtz continued saying that the rule would give the federal government the power to force racial quotes on every community in America.
“AFFH obligates any local jurisdiction that receives HUD funding to conduct a detailed analysis of its housing occupancy by race, ethnicity, national origin, English proficiency, and class (among other categories),” he wrote, and continued:
Grantees must identify factors (such as zoning laws, public-housing admissions criteria, and “lack of regional collaboration”) that account for any imbalance in living patterns. Localities must also list “community assets” (such as quality schools, transportation hubs, parks, and jobs) and explain any disparities in access to such assets by race, ethnicity, national origin, English proficiency, class, and more. Localities must then develop a plan to remedy these imbalances, subject to approval by HUD.
By using its power to approve banking and funding, the federal government would necessarily have the ability to tell suburban areas who will be allowed to live in their neighborhoods and what kind of homes they can build to force immigrant and low-income residents into every neighborhood. In the end, the rule would destroy wealth and lower property values.
But in the last few weeks, the Trump administration has been talking about formally ending the program put in place during the Obama era.
Trump read from Joe Biden’s platform, which the Democrat has proposed ahead of the DNC convention period.
“Abolish – in the suburbs, you’re going to abolish the suburbs with this,” Trump said in advance of reading Biden’s platform on housing policy.
“Enforce Obama-Biden’s radical AFFH – that’s the AFFH regulation that threatens to strip localities of federal affordable housing funds unless they change their zoning laws to fit the federal government’s demands,” Trumps said, reading Biden’s plans.
“So, what you have – I mean, I’ve been watching this for years in Westchester, coming from New York. They want low-income housing built in a neighborhood,” Trump opined.
“Well, I’m ending that rule. I’m taking it out, so – I spoke with Ben Carson the other day. We’re going to be taking it out. I’ve watched that whole thing go, and now they want to make it twice as bad in the suburbs – in the suburbs,” he said.
“Mothers aren’t happy about that. Fathers aren’t happy about that. They worked hard to buy a house, and now they’re going to watch the housing values drop like a rock, and that has happened. It dropped like a rock. So, we’re not going to do that; we’re going to do the exact opposite,” he concluded.
Trump spoke of the AFFH rules the next day, as well.
In a tweet on Wednesday, Trump added that abolishing “the American way of life” is part of Joe Biden’s radical platform for 2020.
“Joe Biden and the Radical Left want to Abolish Police, Abolish ICE, Abolish Bail, Abolish Suburbs, Abolish the 2nd Amendment – and Abolish the American Way of Life. No one will be SAFE in Joe Biden’s America!” he wrote:
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