-By Warner Todd Huston
Obama is taking steps to begin to force “diversity” on your neighborhood through new fiat changes to policies of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Many fear this will force lenders right back into the sort of dangerous Democrat-sponsored lending practices that brought us the recent economic collapse.
This move corresponds to Obama Executive Order 1282, headlined: Leadership and Coordination of Fair Housing in Federal Programs; Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.
“This rule,” the HUD website says, “accordingly proposes to refine existing requirements with a fair housing assessment and planning process that will better aid HUD program participants fulfill this statutory obligation and address specific comments the GAO raised.”It continues saying,
To facilitate this new approach, HUD will provide states, local governments, insular areas, and public housing agencies (PHAs), as well as the communities they serve, with data on patterns of integration and segregation; racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty; access to education, employment, low-poverty, transportation, and environmental health, among other critical assets; disproportionate housing needs based on the classes protected under the Fair Housing Act; data on individuals with disabilities and families with children; and discrimination.
As the rules change sits now, HUD will only “help” with data and recommendations, not force Obama’s will on community lending practices and housing policies. But while the rule does stipulate that it “does not prescribe or enforce specific PHA policies,” it is still being criticized as the camel’s nose under the tent.
Critics warn that this will end up with government forcing banks to make loans to particular classifications of people to correspond to these “diversity” recommendations (which will become requirements in short order, of course).
“This is just the latest of a series of attempts by HUD to social engineer the American people,” said Ed Pinto, of the American Enterprise Institute. “It started with public housing and urban renewal, which failed spectacularly back in the 50’s and 60’s. They tried it again in the 90’s when they wanted to transform house finance, do away with down payments, and the result was millions of foreclosures and financial collapse.”
There is also much concern that these new rules will cause havoc in commercial and business real estate zoning, too.
Fittingly, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan revealed the rule at the NAACP convention in July, making it pretty clear exactly to whom Obama was pandering with this new rule.
Amusingly, as Donovan announced the rule and talked about the children it would “help,” like a dutiful leftist, he used the feminine pronoun in all cases instead of the traditional male. This rule, he said, was about helping the child in neighborhoods so “she” could grow up with the sort of advantages “she” will need to succeed.
This is a perfect example of more pandering to the left and the tearing down of our traditions of using a male identifier when speaking in general terms.
As to who this rule will really “help,” it won’t really help anyone and will just lead once again to the sort of failed liberal lending practices that brought about the housing crisis and economic collapse we are only just starting to emerge from, but it does bring up that ages old joke: What are the most frightening words in the English language? “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, MrConservative.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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