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A warning to local governments about sinister federal intrusion...
by:
Colleen Conley
For more then seven years, the Obama administration has been
relentless in its broad overreach of executive branch powers,
particularly in its attempts to push progressive “social justice” causes
— such as the president’s
transgender bathroom-access edict — on the American people.
What hasn’t gotten enough attention, however, is Obama’s increased
use of the Department of Housing and Urban Development to implement its
own ideas of racial integration by forcing comfortable, suburban
communities across the country to accept vast influxes of low-income
housing residents. The club being wielded by Obama and his allies in the
bureaucracy is the threat to withhold federal funding — or taking legal
action against those communities to force compliance once funds are
accepted.
One Colorado town is pushing back, however, telling the feds that
they can keep their money — and with it their onerous regulations, which
would force local governments to cede sovereign rights.
The local government of Castle Rock — a community of 55,000 located
in central Colorado not far from Denver — recognized that federal
funding in the form of HUD grants were a Trojan Horse that, once
accepted, would allow increased federal intrusion into local affairs.
According to the
10th Amendment Center,
“at issue for the town of Castle Rock was a new set of federal
regulations, 377 pages in all, which gives the unelected HUD bureaucrats
broad powers over grant recipient communities, including the power to
reverse electoral decisions by local voters, change local zoning laws
and force said communities to join regions against the its wishes.”
Castle Rock Mayor Paul Donahue wrote in a letter to HUD applicants in the town:
“If we continue to accept the HUD grants, we will be
forced to prepare detailed taxpayer-financed studies of our schools,
retail, housing, and other community aspects to HUD who will decide if
our neighborhoods are “furthering fair housing.” HUD on a whim could
force us to build low-income, government subsidized housing into our
neighborhoods if HUD decides we aren’t racially balanced enough.”
Indeed, the scenario described by Donahue is being played out in
other communities across the country — and even one entire state.
Westchester County, New York, learned the hard way that HUD grants
came with long strings attached — strings that can be tightened into a
virtual noose.
While the feds dangle dollars and sell their plan to naive citizens as
funding for “walking communities and bike paths,” what it’s really all
about is HUD’s demand that low-income housing — particularly, low-income
rental housing — must be implemented side-by-side with existing housing
in every neighborhood across America. And HUD means it when they say
“every” neighborhood, down to every census block.
Since 2009, Westchester — where Bill and Hillary Clinton make their
home — has been fighting in federal court after the county accepted
federal funds and HUD then demanded that 750 low-income housing units be
constructed in established neighborhoods.
After losing to the feds,
Westchester is no longer accepting HUD’s Community Development Block
Grants to avoid further pressure from the government to dismantle local
zoning rules.
Some states have knuckled under to the federal government. Rhode
Island adopted the federal strategy, called RhodeMapRI, in 2014, as its
official “economic development plan” despite opposition from local
citizens and
The RI Center for Freedom and Prosperity — a conservative think tank.
In December 2014, the center’s CEO, Mike Stenhouse,
laid out the case against the plan:
“That not a single penny was spent on economics experts,
economic modeling tools, or any other form of economic policy or jobs
forecasting is just more evidence of what we’ve been saying all along;
that the RI Division of Planning is perpetrating a ruse on Rhode
Islanders by attempting to position RhodeMap RI as a credible economic
development plan,” commented Mike Stenhouse, CEO for the Center.
Since then, Stenhouse
told Rhode Island legislators in March, RhodeMap
RI — now called RI Innovates — has shown it “is about advancing a
pre-determined, national ‘urban redevelopment’ or sustainable
development philosophy that Brookings and other progressive groups have
been advancing for years … .”
In late April, Westchester County Executive
Rob Astorino, spoke to a standing room only crowd in Rhode Island about his years-long fight with HUD.
“Once HUD gets into your city or town, they will not go away. They want
never-ending settlements and mandates, designed by Washington, D.C.
central-planners and ideologues, who will try to dictate who can live
where,” commented Astorino, who also warned that localities can be
deemed by HUD to be “discriminatory” if certain income and racial
housing “quotas” are not met … a method he ridiculed as “guilt by
statistics, rather than by intent”.
Castle Rock, Colo. saw the writing on the wall based on these — and
many other communities’ — experience with the federal government
sticking its proverbial camel’s nose under the tent.
All municipalities that value local sovereignty should take note.