Democrat Party insiders admit that President Trump’s message to America’s middle class in the suburbs is “working,” a new report reveals, as Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden has vowed an end to local community control of zoning laws.
Democrats, in interviews with Politico, acknowledged that there is an opening for Trump in America’s suburbs where Biden may be more vulnerable than polls have shown.
Politico reports:
In Pinal County, Ariz., where “Thin Blue Line” flags have proliferated outside Phoenix and Tucson, Holly Lyon, chair of the local Democratic Party, said, “There is that little sort of unsettled feeling in people because we can tell that [Trump’s messaging] is grabbing hold, and it’s working.” [Emphasis added]
…
Two Democratic strategists who recently viewed focus groups of suburban voters described high-propensity voters increasingly concerned about unrest in urban centers, though both strategists said it was unclear whether that concern would push them to Biden or to Trump. [Emphasis added]
One of the strategists described a focus group in which white, college-educated women reacted to the protests by discussing their own property values and, in one woman’s case, her family’s mortgage. [Emphasis added]
In recent months, Trump’s Housing and Urban Development (HUD) agency has ended Obama-era housing regulations that sought to diversity suburban communities.
Biden, on the other hand, has pledged to abolish suburban communities as they currently exist through a massive expansion of Section 8 vouchers, requiring local officials to abolish strict zoning laws to be eligible for federal grants, and packing neighborhoods with multi-family, mixed-income housing developments.
The former vice president has admitted that Wall Street investors support his plan because they see more housing development with more density as growth for the GDP.
Ethics and Public Policy Center Senior Fellow Stanley Kurtz has described Biden’s plan as mandating that suburbs eliminate single-family zoning:
Obama’s radical AFFH regulation puts every part of progressives’ “abolish the suburbs” strategy into effect (as I explain in detail here). Once Biden starts to enforce AFFH the way Obama’s administration originally meant it to work, it will be as if America’s suburbs had been swallowed up by the cities they surround. They will lose control of their own zoning and development, they will be pressured into a kind of de facto regional-revenue redistribution, and they will even be forced to start building high-density low-income housing. The latter, of course, will require the elimination of single-family zoning. With that, the basic character of the suburbs will disappear. At the very moment when the pandemic has made people rethink the advantages of dense urban living, the choice of an alternative will be taken away. [Emphasis added]
That’s all bad enough. But on top of AFFH, Biden now plans to use Cory Booker’s strategy for attacking suburban zoning. AFFH works by holding HUD’s Community Development Block Grants hostage to federal-planning demands. Suburbs won’t be able to get the millions of dollars they’re used to in HUD grants unless they eliminate single-family zoning and densify their business districts. AFFH also forces HUD-grant recipients to sign pledges to “affirmatively further fair housing.” Those pledges could get suburbs sued by civil-rights groups, or by the feds, if they don’t get rid of single-family zoning. The only defense suburbs have against this two-pronged attack is to refuse HUD grants. True, that will effectively redistribute huge amounts of suburban money to cities, but if they give up their HUD grants at least the suburbs will be free of federal control. [Emphasis added]
Trump has slammed Biden’s plan to abolish the suburbs, writing in a post last month that suburbanites “want safety & are thrilled that I ended the long-running program where low-income housing would invade their neighborhood.”
“Biden would reinstall it, in a bigger form, with Corey Booker in charge,” Trump wrote.
The majority of Americans describe where they live as “suburban,” but the character, property value, and density of these communities could see rapid, drastic changes with the implementation of Biden’s housing plan.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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