President Biden’s the spate of executive orders has now extended to housing policy – and a promise to reverse the Trump administration’s approach to ‘fair housing’. Specifically, this would mean reversing the Trump reversal of an Obama-era rule, known as ‘Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing’ – designed to provide ‘affordable’ (read ‘subsidized’) housing in suburban postcodes with higher to introduce income. To justify a return to this controversial policy, President Biden has practiced a long litany of federal sins for housing policy. He is right about many of them, but wrong about his approach to correction. More subsidized housing, according to the tragic tradition of public housing, will only encourage division and help less to help minority groups in their pursuit of upward mobility.
It is indisputable, as President Biden stated in his executive order, that during the 20th century, federal, state, and local governments systematically implemented racially discriminatory housing policies that contributed to segregated neighborhoods and equal opportunities and the opportunity to build wealth for Blacks. , hindered. , Latino, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, and Native American families, and other communities under service. Most importantly, the Federal Housing Authority would not ensure bonds for blacks in white neighborhoods, and racial ties – action restrictions against blacks (and Jews, by the way) – were the norm in the 1950s. Urban highways plowed through low-income neighborhoods, often (though not exclusively), displacing thousands of people. Today we are over with the Cross Bronx Expressway and the Chrysler Freeway.
However, even this excuse is selective. African Americans in particular have experienced the tragedy of a (still) favorite progressive program: public housing. An important history here is not appreciated. Historically, black neighborhoods – Central Harlem, Detroit’s Black Bottom, Bronzeville in Chicago, Desoto-Carr in St. Louis – demolished as slums, although there were a large number of owners of residential property and hundreds of black-owned businesses. When they were cleared to make way for public housing, they were replaced by high heels in which ownership – building up assets – was by definition impossible. The social structure of self-help, civil society and upward mobility have been torn apart. Blacks have always been and remain excessive in public and otherwise subsidized housing, often trapped in long-term dependence by counterproductive policies: if their income rises, so does rent.
Compensating for this dual history of utter racism and harmful progressiveism may not mean a new generation of housing sins. But fair promotion of fair housing, should it be restored, is just that. Federal pressure – through the leverage of local utilities – to force the introduction of subsidized rental housing for low-income tenants has long been a guarantee of resistance by lower-middle-class, white and black residents, who are rightly concerned that households that did not strive and are saved to reach their neighborhoods will run into problems. The concentration of tenants for home purchase certificates, spread through the demolition of some public housing projects, has already spread dysfunction and poor maintenance – including in apartment buildings in Warrensville Heights, Ohio’s hometown, Marcia Fudge, the incoming secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing . and Urban Development.
Racial integration and equitable housing remain goals that America must 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 it – but so are their personal choices. When members of minority groups share the economic and educational background of new neighbors, the chance of intolerance is significantly reduced. Therefore, ‘fair housing’ should mean non-discrimination – not subsidized new developments.
Instead, Biden doubles the example set by the Obama administration in Westchester County, which was forced to spend $ 60 million to subsidize 874 housing units – in a country where racial and ethnic minorities are already well represented. This means that current black and Spanish homeowners, who bought their homes by striving and saving, will have to use their provincial taxes to subsidize others with an amount of $ 68,000 per home.
The “exclusive” suburbs will not be exposed by confrontation. There will be endless lawsuits. Instead, if it wants to play a useful role, HUD should try to use tools such as model management (proposals, not mandates) to persuade local planning councils to allow the market to build affordable housing – small houses, including small multi-families , on small plots. Historically, this is how the American working class could afford homes.
An administration that is genuinely interested in correcting the sins of the housing policy of the past will not overlook the existing problems of public and subsidized housing. Here’s a brave idea: sell real estate public housing projects (see the Brooklyn waterfront) and offer cash compensation to its residents. They need to be able to move where they want – or just put the money aside. There is a lot about our housing past to rectify. Doubling past sins is not the way to begin.