Jackson Jambalaya

The Wall Street Journal opined about some HUD social engineering and neighborhoods. Yup, Assistant Secretary and his HUD minions want to make sure your neighbors meet their criteria:

"Elections have consequences, and one result from November has been to empower President Obama's regulators. Consider what the social engineers at the Department of Housing and Urban Development are doing to Westchester County north of New York City.

At issue is a 2009 settlement with HUD in which Westchester committed to develop 750 public housing units in mostly white neighborhoods over seven years. County executive Rob Astorino has financing for 305 units (110 of which are already occupied), putting Westchester ahead of schedule. HUD could have declared victory and moved on to a real mess like, say, Detroit.

Instead, the agency is interfering with local zoning in Westchester to force more racial diversity on suburban neighborhoods. Last week, HUD New York's Director of Community Planning and Development Vincent Hom wrote Mr. Astorino and threatened to cancel $7.4 million in unrelated housing and community development funds. To keep the cash, Westchester must produce "a satisfactory zoning analysis and plan to overcome exclusionary zoning practices."

Westchester spokesman Ned McCormack says such a plan is hard to produce because zoning concerns how land is developed—such as where to put sewers, or multifamily homes—not who lives where. Westchester nonetheless examined zoning practices in 43 municipalities for evidence of racial discrimination and found none. HUD rejected that analysis last April. So Westchester commissioned Pace University law professor John Nolon to examine the legality of the county's conclusions. In June, he agreed with Westchester's findings.

HUD didn't dispute Mr. Nolon's analysis but pressed ahead anyway. The bureaucrats think if neighborhoods are majority white they are ipso facto discriminatory. But as everyone knows, families make housing decisions for a myriad of reasons, from affordability to schools to cultural affinity. Discriminatory intent requires proof that financially able minorities are blocked from buying homes in certain neighborhoods, but there is no evidence of that in Westchester. According to the 2010 census, Westchester is the fourth most racially diverse county in the state, behind Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx and tied with Manhattan.

HUD is also pressing Westchester to "promote" legislation that would force landlords to accept federally subsidized Section 8 housing vouchers to pay rent. Mr. Astorino vetoed such a bill in 2010, and HUD successfully sued the county to reintroduce the measure. Mr. Astorino asked the Democratic-controlled county legislature to resubmit the legislation in August 2012, which it has declined to do. Westchester is appealing to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.....

Westchester is less segregated than many ethnic enclaves in New York City. Republican Mr. Astorino and municipalities are united in their belief that local governments should be able to determine zoning rules for such things as multifamily developments or lot sizes. HUD bureaucrats who want to re-engineer neighborhoods according to some diversity formula will do more harm than good."

I had a front row view to this Section 8 stuff back in the 90's on Old Canton Road. The apartments placed in NE Jackson destroyed it.  The owners of the apartment complexes on Ridgewood and Old Canton Road decided to start accepting section 8 money. Guaranteed checks. You know the drill.  Helping hands are one thing. However, the government changed the disabled classifications to include alcoholism and drug addicts as protect classes. Thus a landlord accepting Section 8 tenants can not refuse those addicts as they are considered to be disabled. Jack Kemp and the Bush Republicans had no problem with this change. In effect, the residents of Northeast Jackson, black and white, were paying crackheads and drunks to move in next to them with their tax dollars. Needless to say, the crime and social problems increased. In fact, I will go further and say Section 8 is a destroyer of neighborhoods and apartment complexes. Walter Olson wrote in Reason magazine:

"To begin with, in this case -- as indeed in most cases of this sort -- the threat of a federal funds cutoff is being deployed with the aim of raising government outlays, not lowering them. HUD is pressing the county to commit to extremely costly plans for subsidized housing, at a price tag estimated to run between $730 million and $1 billion. For more on how the modern arrangements sometimes called "cooperative federalism" operate to push all the participating levels of government into expanding their level of activity, rather than employing the ambition of one level to check another, see Michael Greve's recent work.

Moreover, the question of whether the federal government can ban local government practices for which it cannot show racial motivation, but which have "disparate impact" on one or another protected group, is emerging as one of the hottest issues in housing and local government law. Consider, for example, the situation of a town council that is considering cutting back public bus schedules or recreation programs with more than their share of minority users. Even if motivated by budget concerns or an overall small-government philosophy rather than by a desire to harm or discourage minority patrons, such cutbacks might be arguably illegal if "disparate impact" concepts are to rule the day, as the Obama administration keeps suggesting.

Not least, the Westchester dispute does relate directly to regulation of private citizens. As part of its pressure on the county, HUD is insisting that it is a violation of fair housing law for the county not to enact an ordinance commanding that private landlords not engage in so-called source-of-income discrimination -- which in practice mostly means banning them from turning away government-aided applicants like those from the Section 8 program. Nationally, landlord participation in the Section 8 program is supposed to be voluntary, and many apartment managers and private renters do not participate, sometimes because of less-than-happy experiences with Section 8 tenants. If HUD prevails, it will be one step closer to its apparent goal of requiring -- federal law or no -- that property owners nationwide consent to become Section 8 landlords, a status that brings them under a variety of additional regulations as well as itself seriously infringing their freedom to run their businesses as they please."

Think you can just move to Brandon or Madison to escape paying the crackheads to live next to you? HUD now has other things in mind for your neighborhood as it will seek to institute its own version of forced busing for neighborhoods. I don't recall reading in the Constitution where the government could determine who lives where but apparently Mr. Perez and his legal savants are more gifted than I and found such rights. This is the test case. Watch "disparate impact"  become the new HUD jihad if it succeeds in New York.