No Suburb is an Island

Member Group : Jerry Shenk

Islands are remote refuges from mainland urban areas that are already encroaching on suburban communities, so island living is popular, especially among America’s “elite,” many of whom vacation or locate their summer “cottages” somewhere offshore.

Former President Barack Obama paid $11.75 million for a  29-acre, 7 bedroom, 8.5 bath waterfront mansion on Martha’s Vineyard. The island is a popular Hollywood hide-out. Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey vacation there. The Kennedy family has a long association with Martha’s Vineyard.

Last year, in a monumental display of hypocrisy, the mostly-white, “no human is illegal,” “immigrant-welcoming” progressives of the super-wealthy liberal enclave of Martha’s Vineyard had the Massachusetts National Guard remove fifty Venezuelan illegals from the island – less than .00003 percent of the number of illegals who had then invaded border states since President(ish) Joe Biden opened America’s southern border.

But, now, property owners on affluent Nantucket, sometime home of John Kerry and his ketchup-heiress wife, are ready to impress America with their welcoming liberal bona fides.

Oh, wait…!

The Daily Beast website reports: “The proposal of a 13-acre affordable housing development near a popular [Nantucket] beach has sparked protests and lawsuits, and turned out record numbers of townspeople at hearings. Angry residents claim the 156-unit condo development will damage the environment and strain resources… The developers…claim the residents are just peeved about having a low-income housing project in their own – very large – backyards.”

The average 2022 Nantucket home value was $4.43 million. One 5,075-square-foot home sold for $33 million.

Ultimately, Nantucket may have no choice.

Some history: In 2020, President(ish) Joe Biden’s campaign website section on “Housing” stated: “As President, Biden will enact legislation requiring any state receiving federal dollars through the Community Development Block Grants or Surface Transportation Block Grants to develop a strategy for inclusionary zoning…”

Biden reinstated the Obama/Biden administration’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule (AFFH) requiring communities receiving federal funding (i.e., all of them) to address housing policies that have “discriminatory” effects.

Under that rule, mere allegations of discrimination in communities receiving U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Community Development Block Grants can trigger the imposition of government-determined “fair” housing standards that override local decisions on zoning, housing density and financing.

Fast forward to January 19, 2023, when HUD formulated a rule mandating that local governments submit plans and reports relating to “civil rights concerns” or risk losing federal subsidies. Once imposed, local governments must submit “equity plans” that include an “analysis of fair housing issues confronting their communities, goals, and strategies to remedy those issues in concrete ways, and a description of community engagement” – and integrate them into planning policies.

The original AFFH threat to withhold HUD funds was an attack on the suburban single-family home lifestyle to which families, including minorities, relocated for space and safety outside crowded, dangerous, mismanaged cities. But, by tying funding for road projects – Surface Transportation Block Grants – to “non-discriminatory” housing, single-family suburban zoning will be further sacrificed on the altar of “diversity.”

No community is immune.

For years, prosperous Westchester County, NY, where Democrats outnumber Republicans more than two to one, forfeited Obama/Biden-era Community Development Block Grants to protect local zoning authority. But, relinquishing road funding is virtually impossible, even in wealthy communities.

HUD’s plan ignores that every group in America opposes forced housing diversification. Majority opposition is not, as the administration asserts, “racist.”

A 2020 Rasmussen poll found that “73% of likely voters [including majorities of blacks, non-black minorities and Democrats] thought the federal government should not play a role in deciding where people can live. 65% of respondents said it is not the government’s job to diversify neighborhoods based on income.”

HUD would regulate out of existence the low-density suburbs to which not just “privileged” white, but working white, black, Hispanic and Asian families also relocated to escape lousy schools and the widespread crime and violence in large Democrat-run cities like Philadelphia. The Biden regime’s goals represent vital quality of life and public safety issues in suburban communities.

Philadelphia’s collar counties – Bucks, Montgomery, Chester and Delaware – include some of America’s most prosperous suburbs. All of them went for Biden in 2020. Bucks was the closest – Biden +4.4 percent – the others were landslides.

Well-heeled Biden voters there asked for it, and they are about to get it – good and hard. Sadly, so will everyone else.

https://www.pottsmerc.com/2023/01/30/jerry-shenk-no-suburb-is-an-island/