Do you remember the scene in Doctor Zhivago when Yuri returns to his house in Moscow, only to find that it has been taken over by the local Soviet?
The two "comrades" in charge tell him there is room for 13 families in that house! And he says carefully:
"In that case, this is a better arrangement. More just..."
That's all I could think of when I read this:
(CNSNews.com) - To ensure that "every American is able to choose to live in a community they feel proud of," HUD has published a new fair-housing regulation intended to give people access to better neighborhoods than the ones they currently live in.
The goal is to help communities understand "fair housing barriers" and "establish clear goals" for "improving integrated living patterns and overcoming historic patterns of segregation."
“This proposed rule represents a 21st century approach to fair housing, a step forward to ensuring that every American is able to choose to live in a community they feel proud of – where they have a fair shot at reaching their full potential in life,” said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan.
“For the first time ever," Donovan added, "HUD will provide data for every neighborhood in the country, detailing the access African American, Latino, Asian, and other communities have to local assets, including schools, jobs, transportation, and other important neighborhood resources that can play a role in helping people move into the middle class."
.... Under the proposed rule, the neighborhood data provided by HUD will be used to evaluate patterns of integration and segregation, racial and ethnic concentrations of poverty, and access to "valuable community assets."
According to HUD, long-term solutions include "helping people gain access to different neighborhoods ..."
If I'm not mistaken, this is very much connected to what Stanley Kurtz was writing about at Forbes, August 2012:
How Obama Is Robbing The Suburbs To Pay For The Cities
As many Americans do not know, in the eyes of the leftist community organizers who trained Obama, suburbs are instruments of bigotry and greed — a way of selfishly refusing to share tax money with the urban poor. Obama adopted this view early on, and he has never wavered from this ideological commitment, as a review of his actions in office goes to show.
President Obama’s plans for a second-term include an initiative to systematically redistribute the wealth of America’s suburbs to the cities. It’s a transformative idea, and deserves to be fully aired before the election. But like a lot of his major progressive policy innovations, Obama has advanced this one stealthily – mostly through rule-making, appointment, and vague directives.
Obama has worked on this project in collaboration with Mike Kruglik, one of his original community organizing mentors. Kruglik’s new group, Building One America, advocates “regional tax-base sharing,” a practice by which suburban tax money is directly redistributed to nearby cities and less-well-off “inner-ring” suburbs. Kruglik’s group also favors a raft of policies designed to coerce people out of their cars and force suburbanites (with their tax money) back into densely packed cities.
Obama has lent the full weight of his White House to Kruglik’s efforts. A federal program called the Sustainable Communities Initiative, for example, has salted planning commissions across the country with “regional equity” and “smart growth” as goals.
NB: Just weeks ago, the White House marked the four-year anniversary...
These are, of course, code words. “Regional equity” means that, by their mere existence, suburbs cheat the people who live in cities. It means, “Let’s spread the suburbs’ wealth around” – i.e., take from the suburbanites to give to the urban poor. “Smart growth” means, “Quit building sub-divisions and malls, and move back to where mass transit can shuttle you between your 800 square foot apartment in an urban tower and your downtown job.”
Read it all; it is a sordid tale that touches on everything Obama from Dreams of My Father, Frank Marshall Davis and Jeremiah Wright -- to this Kruglik fellow and the his ideology spawned by Myron Orfield and David Rusk (all on the board of Building One America).
Too few heeded Kurtz's warning before the 2012 election, but it's never too late to try to understand what's being done by bureaucrats behind closed doors that will affect all our lives, our neighborhoods and apparently, our very homes.
Last bit from Kurtz:
To this day, Obama quietly coordinates his administration’s policies on urban/suburban issues with Kruglik, Orfield, and Rusk. Kruglik’s anti-suburban battle is set to become one of the defining themes of Obama’s second term. Although calls for “regional tax-base sharing” will strike the public as something entirely new, the program is the fulfillment of the president’s lifetime ambition. Still trying to avoid being mistaken for a middle-class, suburban “sellout,” Obama has hit upon the ultimate solution: a massive redistribution of suburban tax money to America’s cities.
EXTRA CREDIT to anyone who reads the book.
When Kurtz said, "To this day," it was last year, last summer in fact. But check out Building One America today:
https://buildingoneamerica.org/
Following the first-ever White House forum on suburbs in 2011, Building One America partnered with the White House last year to hold nine regional roundtable meetings. These discussions surfaced critical but common problems facing increasingly diverse middle class communities around public schools, water infrastructure, housing and transportation. This year’s summit fulfils commitments from the White House and Building One America to dig deeper into issues facing diverse communities and regions with members of Congress and relevant agency officials.
Damn if that doesn't lead right back to the CNS News story about HUD's proposed "fair housing" regulation. Oy gevalt.
Posted by: Tom Glennon | Tuesday, 23 July 2013 at 03:37 PM