Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) recently announced that the House would not vote on a bipartisan infrastructure bill until the Senate passes a larger set of Democratic priorities through budget reconciliation.
Biden said he agreed with the Speaker on the sequencing.
Following Pelosi’s remarks, President Biden announced he won’t sign the bipartisan infrastructure plan if Congress doesn’t also send him a reconciliation bill simultaneously.
“If only one comes to me, this is the only one that comes to me, I’m not signing it. It’s in tandem,” Biden told reporters at the White House.
The smaller more traditional infrastructure agreement has the support of several GOP senators while the reconciliation is much more expansive than traditional infrastructure, and is expected to only have democratic support.
According to some reports, the focus of Biden’s infrastructure bill is in part to address aging infrastructure across the country, but the massive bill also covers a vast amount of other spending, including money for “diversifying” neighborhoods.
Sources claim that part of the plan with only democratic support would change zoning laws to end single-family home neighborhoods and allow for multiple unit “affordable” or low-income rental housing.
The plan may call for local governments to essentially abolish suburbs, by making grants contingent upon towns and counties allowing apartments in any neighborhood, including those currently zoned for only single-family homes.
If certain towns want to preserve their small-town feel, they must turn down the money, hurting the towns and leading to a sizeable infusion of taxpayer dollars for Democratic-dominated cities.
If suburbs take the money, they would essentially be signing a contract to become architecturally dense, like cities, likely leading to permanent democrat control over those jurisdictions.
USA Today reported in April that “Biden’s proposal would award grants and tax credits to cities that change zoning laws to bolster more equitable access to affordable housing. A house with a white picket fence and a big backyard for a Fourth of July barbecue may be a staple of the American dream, but experts and local politicians say multifamily zoning is key to combating climate change, racial injustice, and the nation’s growing affordable housing crisis.”
During the Barack Obama Administration, HUD, under the 2015 ‘Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Initiative,’ created regulations to integrate any neighborhood in America that was over 50% White. President Bill Clinton started a similar program in 1994 called “Moving to Opportunity Initiative,” which moved thousands of mostly Black-American families from government projects to higher-quality section-8 homes in White suburbs.
The experiment bombed. A 2011 study sponsored by HUD found that adults involved in the program did not get better jobs or get off welfare, and their children did not do any better in school. In fact, more adults went on food stamps, and crime followed them to their White neighborhoods, ruining the quality of life for existing residents, and driving down the values of the homes in the areas.
Dubuque, Iowa, for example, received an influx of voucher holders from projects in Chicago — and it’s had a problem with crime ever since. A recent study linked Dubuque’s crime wave directly to Section 8 housing, and in other cities like Dallas, a similar scenario played out.
State law is the foundation for local planning. The California Government Code for instance (Sections 65000 et seq.) contains many of the laws pertaining to the regulation of land uses by local governments including: the general plan requirement, specific plans, subdivisions, and zoning. States have the authority and the right to zone in a way that is beneficial to the homeowners who have worked their entire lives to afford a home in a safe area, and to count on the value of their home to remain relatively stable.
Republican state legislatures should move to zone in a way that keeps low-rent housing with low-rent housing, apartment complexes near apartment complexes, and houses near houses. And all of those nowhere near each other.
If jurisdictions reject the plan, and states move to prevent the coming zoning proposals by law, private corporations may pick up the slack and do what the government can’t through the private sector.
According to a recent report from the Wall Street Journal, roughly 200 investment firms are buying tens of thousands of homes — and sometimes entire neighborhoods — raising prices, and competing with middle-class Americans looking to take advantage of low-interest rates and buy their first home.
Wall Street’s latest mass real estate grab has grown to tens of billions of dollars, representing hundreds of thousands of properties. In some communities, it has fundamentally altered housing ecosystems, fueling a housing boom without a homeowner boom. Private-equity firms have developed new ways to secure credit, enabling them to leverage their equity and acquire a nearly endless amount of homes.
Corporations have made up around 30% of new home sales in the past 6 months, but the new Wall Street owners don’t plan to sell the homes. They plan to rent them out, and a new report claims that this practice is actually a ‘good thing.’
In an article published recently by the Wall Street Journal about the coming age of ‘the rental suburbs,’ the writers claim that millennials and their families prefer to steer away from the idea of a 30-year mortgage, because they want the flexibility of renting and the freedom of being able to leave after a lease.
In the article they argue that millennials like the idea of a yard, basement, and better schools, but would prefer to rent their home from a Wall Street Landlord because they don’t want to deal with the ‘headache’ of ‘mowing their own yard or buying a new motor when the garage door breaks.’
Despite this claim and their reputation for renting, according to polling millennials want to own homes, not rent them.
