National Review
Biden’s Executive Order on Housing: Replacing Old Sins with New
President Biden’s flurry of executive orders has now extended to housing policy – and into a pledge to reverse the Trump administration’s approach to “ fair housing. ” Specifically, that would mean the Trump reversal of an Obama-era rule known as “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” – intended to introduce “affordable” (read “subsidized”) housing in higher-income zip codes in the suburbs. , is reversed. To justify a return to this controversial policy, President Biden rehearsed a long litany of federal housing policy sins. He’s right about much of it, but about his approach to storytelling. More subsidized housing, in the tragic public housing tradition, will only encourage divisions and do little to help minority groups in their quest for upward mobility. It is undeniable, as President Biden stated in his executive order, that “in the 20th century federal, state and local governments systematically pursued racially discriminatory housing policies that contributed to segregated neighborhoods and equal opportunities and the opportunity to build wealth for Black,” Latino, Asian-American and Pacific Islanders and Native American families and other disadvantaged communities. ”Most importantly, the federal housing authority would not insure mortgages for blacks in white neighborhoods, and racial covenants – act restrictions against blacks (and Jews, for that matter) – were the norm until the 1950s. Urban highways plowed through low-income neighborhoods, often (but not exclusively) of minorities, chasing thousands. Today we have the Cross Bronx Expressway and the Chrysler Freeway over. However, even this apology is selective. African Americans in particular suffered the tragedy of a (still) favorite progressive program: public housing. An important history is undervalued here. Historically, black neighborhoods — Central Harlem, Detroit’s Black Bottom, Chicago’s Bronzeville, Desoto-Carr in St. Louis — have been disparaged as slums, even though they were home to vast numbers of home owners and hundreds of black businesses. When they were cleared to make way for public housing, they were replaced by high-rise buildings in which ownership – wealth building – was by definition impossible. The social fabric of self-help, civil society and upward mobility has been torn apart. Blacks are and always remain disproportionately represented in public and otherwise subsidized housing, often entangled in long-term dependence by counterproductive policies: as their incomes rise, so do rents. Making up for this dual history of downright racism and harmful progressivism should not mean a new generation of housing sins. But affirmatively promoting fair housing, should it be restored, is just that. Federal pressure – through the leverage of local utilities – to enforce the introduction of subsidized rental housing for low-income tenants has long been a guarantee of resistance from lower-middle-class residents, white and black, and rightly concerned that households that have not strived and saved to get close to them will pose problems. Concentrations of tenant with a housing voucher, spread through the demolition of a number of public housing projects, have already spread to malfunctioning and poor maintenance – including in apartment buildings in Warrensville Heights, the birthplace of Marcia Fudge in Ohio, the new secretary to the United States Department of Housing. and urban development. Racial integration and fair housing remain goals America should strive for. But that means understanding how neighborhoods work. Americans, black and white, choose to live in areas where they share the socio-economic characteristics of their neighbors. Some liberals may not like that, but so are their personal choices. When members of a minority group share the economic and educational backgrounds of new neighbors, the likelihood of intolerance is greatly reduced. Therefore “fair housing” should mean non-discrimination – unsubsidised new developments. Instead, Biden doubles down on the example of the Obama administration in Westchester County, which was forced to spend $ 60 million to subsidize 874 housing units – in a county where racial and ethnic minorities are already well represented. That means today’s black and Hispanic homeowners, who bought their home through striving and saving, will have to see their provincial taxes used to subsidize others at the rate of $ 68,000 per home. The “exclusionary” suburbs will not be broken up by confrontation. There will be endless lawsuits. Instead, if the HUD is to play a useful role, it should try to use tools like model zoning (suggestions, not mandates) to convince local planning boards to allow the market to build natural affordable housing – small houses, including small multi-family houses, on small lots. Historically, that was how the American working class could afford housing. A government genuinely interested in correcting the sins of past housing policies would not overlook the existing problems of public and subsidized housing. Here’s a bold idea: Sell public housing projects on high-quality real estate (see Brooklyn’s waterfront) and give the residents cash compensation. They should be able to move where they want – or just put the money aside. Much about our housing history needs to be corrected. Doubling over previous sins is not the way to start.