A rising number of state legislatures, especially in “blue” states, are exerting pressure on municipal zoning ordinances in the suburbs to allow for greater multifamily housing. “Exclusionary zoning” is what the Biden administration called it, and it was part of his first $2.3 trillion infrastructure program.
In a not-so-subtle move, they are trying to break apart the right-wing voting blocs that control the suburbs by importing people who often support the left at the polls.
Minimum lot sizes, minimum square footage, bans on multi-family dwellings, and height restrictions have all been framed by the White House Council of Economic Advisers as a racial problem.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to insure mortgage loans, enabling tens of millions of Americans to own their houses for the first time. On the other hand, the FHA lending criteria were openly racist and plainly segregationist, with language like “infiltration” by “inharmonious racial groupings” and “incompatible racial element” in public schools.
After WWII, black servicemen were not given the same advantages as their white counterparts. In the case of VA loans, for instance, private financial firms underwrote them and practiced racial discrimination. Two out of every three thousand loans made in Mississippi went to black veterans.
Income and wealth are the major hurdles to property or a residential lease, and this work emphasizes these points repeatedly.
Housing is a costly need; therefore, having a sizable salary and being able to devote a sizable portion of it to mortgage payments and other housing costs is essential. Buying a first home is a common goal for young people, especially newlyweds.
A backer of the New York State Senate bill that would enable rezoning in affluent suburbs was recently cited as claiming that progressives want to frame an economic problem in divisive, racial, and class lines to generate “affordable” housing in even the most expensive neighborhoods.
Most practical Americans, however, understand that economics, not race, is at the heart of the problem and that upper-middle-class white people—not frugality, delayed pleasure, or personal responsibility—control the federal and New York state governments.
Other practical Americans know this is a political move aimed at giving the left more power and not so much about correcting past inequities.
