President Trump once again warned Americans on Wednesday that the suburbs will be destroyed if former Vice President Joe Biden is elected next month.
The President Tweeted, “Biden supports Cory Booker’s Bill that will force low income housing in the Suburbs, which will lower property values and bring crime to your neighborhoods. If Dems win, GOODBYE SUBURBS!”
Sen. Booker’s HOME Act would require states that receive community development block grants to create “an inclusive zoning strategy” to attract more affordable housing and “create a more affordable, elastic and diverse housing supply.”
This is the latest round in the fight over the suburbs – including a brief squabble over the issue at the debate last month.
In July, Trump rescinded President Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, which Trump said, “took away decision-making from local communities.”
Part of the Fair Housing Act, the AFFH rule under Obama was designed to “set out a framework for local governments, States, and public housing agencies to take meaningful actions to overcome historic patterns of segregation, promote fair housing choice, and foster inclusive communities that are free from discrimination,” according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Under the old AFFH rule, HUD provides a Far Housing AFH Assessment Tool, “which includes instructions and data provided by HUD, consists of a series of questions designed to help program participants identify, among other things, fair housing issues pertaining to patterns of integration and segregation; racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty; disparities in access to opportunity; and disproportionate housing needs, as well as the contributing factors for those issues.”
A Trump Administration fact sheet on the president’s action says, “This action ends the Federal encroachment on local communities that threatened our nation’s suburbs. The Obama Administration’s original AFFH rule attempted to take local zoning decisions out of the hands of local communities.”
It also claims “AFFH would have imposed a massive regulatory burden on localities, required high density zoning, eliminated single family zoning, and destroyed our suburbs. This overregulation of our suburbs would have harmed Americans’ abilities to work, buy homes, and build lives for their families, including many minority communities.”