Editor’s Note:From our CEO and Founder, David Layfield:
Affordable Housing Online has always been dedicated to helping low-income renters. This does not stop at just helping renters find affordable housing. It is also important for me to help renters understand legislation and policies that can affect their housing opportunities.
A recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal co-written by President Trump and HUD Secretary Ben Carson really set me off. It spreads fears that new affordable housing in the suburbs will bring crime and lawlessness; and that Black, Latino, and other minority families living next door to suburban households will destroy the American Dream.
This article is riddled with falsehoods that are designed to stoke racial and class divisions. Trump and Carson appeal to the worst fears they think will drive suburban voters in the coming election. Everything in it opposes what Affordable Housing Online is all about.
Sometimes you can’t just let destructive lies hang around unchallenged. Below are my candid thoughts and rebuttals to Trump and Carson’s falsehoods.
Donald Trump/Ben Carson:“The crime and chaos in Democrat-run cities have gotten so bad that liberals are even getting out of Manhattan’s Upper West Side.”
DT/BC: “As usual, anyone who dares tell the truth about what the left is doing is smeared as a racist.”
DT/BC:“We reversed an Obama-Biden regulation that would have empowered the Department of Housing and Urban Development to abolish single-family zoning, compel the construction of high-density “stack and pack” apartment buildings in residential neighborhoods, and forcibly transform neighborhoods across America so they look and feel the way far-left ideologues and technocratic bureaucrats think they should.”
DT/BC: “We reject the ultraliberal view that the federal bureaucracy should dictate where and how people live. We believe the suburbs offer a wonderful life for Americans of all races and backgrounds when they are allowed to grow organically, from the bottom up.”
DT/BC: “Every American has a stake in thriving suburbs. The shameful days of redlining are gone, and a majority of the country lives in the suburbs, including majorities of African-Americans, Hispanic Americans and Asian-Americans.”
DT/BC:“Minneapolis abolished single-family zoning this year—a few months before it voted to abolish its police force. Oregon outlawed single-family zoning last year. For the past three years, the state senator who represents Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco has led a push to abolish single-family zoning in California.”
DT/BC: “Liberals even believe this unprecedented federal disruption of the suburbs is required to battle climate change. They say the suburbs are a problem because of unacceptably high levels of greenhouse gases generated by a family with its own house, a yard, two cars and a dog.”
DT/BC:“The Biden-Sanders unity platform calls for reimposing the Obama-Biden dystopian vision of building low-income housing units next to your suburban house. Some leading Democrats want to go even further. Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. James Clyburn have introduced a bill that would hold hostage more than $12 billion in federal grants to states for safe roads unless local politicians agree to densify the suburbs.”
DT/BC:“America was founded on liberty and independence, not government coercion, domination and control. It would be a terrible mistake to put the federal government in charge of local decisions—from zoning and planning to schools. Our Founders understood this was the path to tyranny.”
DT/BC:“Decades of liberal governance have tragically made many urban cities unaffordable and others unlivable, unable to provide for their citizens’ basic needs in housing, public safety and education.”
DT/BC:“While we fight every day to restore our cities’ greatness with innovative means like opportunity zones, the left opposes us on rebuilding the economy, on law and order, and on school choice. We won’t let them export their failures to America’s suburbs. We will save our cities, from which these terrible policies have come, and we will save our suburbs.”
This op-ed is not the first time Trump has twisted the affordable housing crisis to fan racial tensions. Affordable Housing Online has written about Trump and Carson’s ongoing efforts to gut enforcement of the Fair Housing Act. And since this op-ed appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the president has only intensified his frantic appeals to suburban fears.
Just this week, Trump tweeted that Joe Biden had pledged to abolish the suburbs. In another tweet the same day, he said a Biden administration would bring violence to the suburbs through low-income housing and projects.
President Trump and Secretary Carson have shown over the last three years that they are no friends to low-income renters. This op-ed shows their true stripes.