377-Page Rule Put HUD1 on Steroids
Q. Should a 41-year-old federal appointee
have power to decide who lives where
“This new regulation is designed to give unelected, anonymous bureaucrats in Washington the power to pick and choose who your new next-door neighbor will be. If they don’t believe your neighborhood is ‘diverse’ enough, they will seize control of local zoning decisions – choosing what should be built, where, and who should pay for it – in order to make your neighborhood look more like they want it to.”
–U. S. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah)
U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) offered an amendment to defund an unconstitutional power-grab that allows the Department of Housing and Urban Development to become a National Zoning Board with authority to rewrite local zoning laws and land-use regulations in every city and town, and transform demographics of state legislative and congressional districts. Senator Lee’s amendment was tabled by a vote of 60 – 37. Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson was one of 162 Republican senators who voted NO. Those NO-votes kept the President’s plan alive.
The new rule authorizes HUD to re-engineer the composition of neighborhoods by race, ethnicity, and class. That means HUD could move low-income families into single-family neighborhoods or disperse low-income housing developments into any community anywhere, regardless of local zoning ordinances, actions of elected local officials, or community desires. Unless the plan is stopped, HUD will re-zone all U.S. neighborhoods to comply with federal government specifications developed and enforced by the executive branch of government.
It can be stopped! Senator Lee says the Affirmatively Further Fair Housing (AFFH) plan can be easily thwarted, IF local governments, simply, refuse to take federal grants. Local officials who accept AFFH grants must agree to relinquish their power to control zoning policies. Meaning, the plan is contingent on successfully bribing local officials into compliance.
Senator Lee explained how AFFH works. Cities and towns must audit their local housing policies under close supervision of HUD regulators. Communities that fail to meet HUD’s new definition of “fair housing” must submit a community reorganization plan to comply with HUD.
Not only will HUD direct local governments and public housing authorities to make specific changes to zoning policies, HUD will require local officials to adopt HUD’s preferred housing policies or lose their traditional Community Development Block Grant for community needs.
Current Status. The U.S. House passed Rep. Paul Gosar’s (R-AZ) amendment to defund AFFH and attached it to the FY 2016 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. Now the Senate must do likewise and pass Senator Lee’s amendment that was tabled in May. All senators in footnote 2 must be asked to vote YES.
ACTION – Call Senator Johnny Isakson, 1-877-762-8762 or 770-661-0999, and ask him to support Lee’s amendment.
- To read the rest of this newsletter in PDF format, please click here.