The Department of Housing and Urban Development is now
hinting or planting seeds that the Federal Government should be working to
influence who houses get sold to in neighborhoods across the nation. They are
suggesting that ethnic criteria from the national Census Data Base should be
used to increase diversity in neighborhoods.
You think I am assuming too much – well just read what was
printed in The Atlantic this week.
The
federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 didn't simply prohibit discrimination in an
era of starkly segregated cities. The law went one step more, requiring the
government to also "affirmatively further" fair housing – to, in
other words, proactively enable integration. In the four decades since, overt
discrimination has clearly declined. But this second objective has remained
much more elusive.
Last
week, the Department of Housing and Urban Development published a long-awaited proposed rule that it believes will bring the Fair
Housing Act and this still unachieved promise "into the 21st
century." Speaking earlier this month to the NAACP, HUD Secretary Shaun
Donovan admitted that the requirement to enable integration had "proven largely to be a meaningless paper exercise without any teeth."
Wasn’t it bad enough that the Federal Government ushered in
the housing collapse and ultimately our recession to begin with by forcing
lending institutions to people who could not afford the loans? All of this was
done with the wonderful and highly noble goal of increasing opportunities for
lower income families and individuals to achieve the dream of home ownership.
The meltdown was the
consequence of a combination of the easy money and low interest rates
engineered by the Federal Reserve and the easy housing engineered by a variety
of government agencies and policies. Those agencies include the Department of
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and two nominally private
“government-sponsored enterprises” (GSEs), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The
agencies — along with laws such as the Community Reinvestment Act
, eventually leading to a requirement that banks make loans to people with poor
and nonexistent credit histories — made widespread homeownership a national
goal. This all led to a home-buying frenzy and an explosion of subprime and
other non-prime mortgages, which banks and the GSEs bundled into dubious
securities and peddled to investors worldwide - investment vehicles called
‘Credit Default Swaps’.
Our most recent recession, one that we are still not nearly
recovered from, was a result of
Social Engineering on the part of Progressive Washington
Elites and those elected leaders who were tempted to follow along in order to
pander for votes. Yes we can blame the Wall Street Guys - Hovering in the
background was the knowledge that the federal government would bail out
troubled “too-big-to-fail” financial corporations, including Fannie and
Freddie.
(For proof of this
accepted knowledge, please see Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System--and Themselves’
– by
Andrew Ross Sorkin).
I have to tell you… I am more than frustrated that our
government is spending very little time working on real solutions; and thinking
that these types of programs are going to actually help.
Here’s a great idea – you want people of all races and
creeds to afford a home – get the heck out of the way and let the market create
more jobs that pay well and provide advancement opportunity!
But no… the easier path for these politicians and
bureaucrats is to pander to more special rights and perceived victim grievances.
I seriously feel like I am living in an Orwellian novel.
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