If you’ve worked hard to afford a suburban house with a patch of lawn where your kids can play, you’re under attack.
The Biden administration and Democrats in New York, Connecticut and other states are fighting local zoning laws in order to build high-rise apartment buildings with “affordable” units in tree-lined, single-family neighborhoods. All in the name of equity, meaning everyone can live in a tranquil suburb, whether they’ve earned the money to pay for it or not.
The Biden administration announced Jan. 19 that it will require all towns across the U.S. to submit “Equity Plans” showing how they will make it possible for low-income people to live there by providing affordable housing, transportation and other resources.
Towns that don’t meet the cookie-cutter requirement for economic diversity will lose federal funding.
No one’s denying there’s a housing shortage. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is pushing some reasonable proposals such as allowing mother-in-law apartments and relaxing environmental restrictions on residential building.
But Hochul’s biggest proposal, the Housing Compact, is another misguided attack on local control and single-family zoning.
It will compel each town and village in the New York metro area to increase its housing stock to meet a uniform, state-imposed target and rezone for high-density housing — apartment buildings — within a half-mile of every MTA train stop.
Say goodbye to quaint downtowns lined with two-story buildings and older houses.
If a town fails to meet state targets, the Compact will allow developers to build big in defiance of local zoning boards in almost all cases.
Hochul is seeking legislative approval for her plan by April. Suburban homeowners are battling a powerful alliance of real estate developers in it for the money and social justice warriors determined to end single-family zoning.
Local control will be obliterated. Albany will call the shots on what your town looks like, how much traffic there is and ultimately what your home is worth.
Slate Magazine’s Henry Grabar bashed Hochul’s critics as “a band of recalcitrant, remorseless ne’er-do-wells.” He’s wrong. Their concerns are legitimate. For most people, their home is their biggest asset.
Opponents of single-family zoning are also playing the race card. ERASE Racism President Laura Harding says she’s fighting for a Long Island “free of structural racism and de facto segregation.” The same phony pretext is being trotted out everywhere.
Racial discrimination is abhorrent and should be prosecuted. But as a Brookings Institution analysis of the 2020 census shows, race isn’t a barrier to suburban living. Blacks are moving to the suburbs at a faster pace than whites. Anybody can be suburban. It just takes money — especially in Connecticut. In 2017, developer Arnold Karp purchased a colonial house on tree-lined Weed St. in small, ultra-wealthy New Canaan. There are no commercial or multi-family buildings on the street. He now wants to build a five-story, 102-unit apartment complex with 30% set aside for affordable housing.
Weed Street is only a 10-minute drive, or a 17-minute local train ride, to Stamford, a midsize city where the quantity of affordable housing (nearly 16%) exceeds state guidelines.
Ensuring a supply of affordable housing within a region is more reasonable than demanding every town alter its character.
Local officials explain that New Canaan’s six-person fire department doesn’t even have hoses or trucks to fight a fire in a building as big as Karp’s design.
Weed St. neighbor Chris DeMuth Jr. warns Karp’s plan “is to cram over 300 people into a lot currently occupied by a single-family home.”
“If they destroy Weed Street, they could come for your neighborhood next,” says a flier DeMuth circulated to his neighbors.
In fact, Connecticut’s Senate Democrats announced they’re making housing equity “in every community in the state” a top priority.
Democrats seem to believe everyone has a right to the same lifestyle, whether they’ve earned enough to pay the tab or not. So why stop with housing equity? Government could also compel fine restaurants to set aside a certain number of tables for “affordable” dining. All for the sake of — you got it — dining equity.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website.
COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM
I left long island about 15 years ago when rising taxes and the high cost of owning property was also increasing. This is just another push from the left.if they don’t own it why should you
Where do Biden and the Democrats get the authority to require these plans and to seek to encroach on the authority of the various states and localities? This is more of them seeking to deprive our citizens of their rights. If this is another exercise of the “Commerce Clause”, the Supreme Court should put a stop to it. This is local; it has nothing to do with national commerce.
It is so amusing. Obama is the one who fundamentally wanted to change the country. But the one who ruins everything he tries is the one who is accomplishing the destruction of America more efficiently than Obama could ever have dreamed.
Biden kept saying in his SOTU speech that we should let him finish the job. What he did not say is what it meant, we are to let him finish the job of finishing America as a free and sovereign nation.
Soviet “LEGO” land.
Equity mandates are like vaccine mandates. People will rebel against it.
Plus everything comes out of DC local governments are disappearing. They are working on breaking down the constitution. Free speech is already taken care off, right to bear arms is being worked on, right to assemble by white people is verboten only BLM en Antifa can demonstrate and burn down cities.
This is another form of control to have people move into cities so they can have more control over our movements. Like the tests cities in Scotland where people are allowed 2 days a week to drive outside the cities. It is on a rotating basis. And no more than 30 miles. If you break these rules you will be punished. Maybe next couple of weeks you are not allowed outside the city.
That is why they are building huge apartment buildings in the cities, equity and control has been reached.
This is being done slowly but it is part of a plan and those that still follow Brandon and the gang will be in shock when they find out this means them too.
It’s so typical of the dem’s to give to those who have not earned what you have earned, all under the guise of equity. What happened to work hard, save and invest your money, play by the rules and make a better life for yourself and your family? Now, it’s I want what you have but I’m not willing to put in the time or work needed to get it, besides I deserve it because X,Y, and Z…BS!
Before I even started reading the article I thought, here we go with the “equity” con again and sure enough…there it was…second sentence of the second paragraph. The left loves “equity”. Unlike equality, which is a starting line where all are endowed with unalienable rights from our Creator, “equity” is a finish line where everyone finishes last. That equally horrible finish is assured by stealing from the doers and giving it to the takers. Anyone that thinks that this isn’t straight up communism is completely deluding themselves.
A similar story on the exact same subject was run here recently. There are numerous other important topics that deserve attention as well. After all, the Democrats are attacking the American public from all sides. Maybe a little variety would be appreciated by the readership here. Just a suggestion.
This whole idea wreaks of communism… large blocs of drab soviet style apartments… “all those in sector “c” report for annual government sponsored “vaccinations” etc”.
Does that include exclusive zip codes I wonder About as probable as wind turbines near their compounds
It’s ALL about communism, the commie’s are DEMANDING control of property, and control of your rights and life! Hanging is too good for communists!
Sounds like the makings of a food civil war. Bring it on.
This the same Communist crap Clinton’s tried to pull in the ‘90’s.
But on the whole country.
buy land while you can or the Chi-Coms will own it all
Apartments being built in my neighborhood have mo they rentals more expensive than house payments. Are taxpayers subsidizing these units?
This is called Agenda 21 now called Agenda 2030
Let’s do a test run in Biden’s neighborhood first to see if it works.
They have to house the millions of illegals who came across the border since biden took office. All that money they have wasted could have built the wall on our border. Instead they have given millions to other countries to build them borders. The congress and house I believe wouldn’t let Trump build it because the democrats had a plan.
We must demand an end to globalist control of our country (Agenda 2030) and the World Economic Forum agenda!!
Once again the Democrats say equality for all yet ask one if they want it in their home town. This kind of hypocrisy will enveribly lead to the death of the American dream
Sadly, the left continues to rule with an iron fist.
Interesting. How will that workout in the ultra reach areas of Long Island. The ultra rich liberals will push for this. But. Not in there neighborhood. Always the same. Push out the middle class.
This is the promotion of communism! Americans need to say no! Cities and States need to refuse to send money to the federal government if they try to force them to do something that is not good for the vote or state. Lowering requirements to house everyone doesn’t equal equality for the good. It makes everyone equally poor! Less government. Free-market economy. That is the answer! The dems have created this probably with “funny” money!
How are these politicians leading by example? Have they checked section 8 results of housing and apartments in Southern California? These individuals treat these homes like dumps and drug dens in some cases. There is no equity here.
Lots of properties around Martha’s Vineyard houses. Start by building there first.
I grew up in a 4th for a walk up, Eating living in an apartment building and watching the building go from being a nice safe building to be scary afraid to walk the hall’s loud music that’s not equity that’s torture that made me have the desire to work at minimum 2 to 3 jobs all the way through college to pay for my college and start saving for a house and it took me a long time to save my house but that was the desire to go on the tree line streets if you want it you can do it that’s equity you work for it I’m sure our governor hackle is not putting up apartment buildings next to our house what about the 865 million dollar concession contract she gave a husband that’s called collusion is illegal why isn’t that grounds for impeachment. And Biden put him next to your beach house I bet you won’t you’re a hypocrite Demonic rat politicians this equity stuff has gone too far I had to leave a job why one is if you were white you were not going anywhere yet I worked there for 40 years and I never saw that in the past happening people got promoted because of their qualities and qualifications and that work ethic didn’t matter what race didn’t matter what color but now it does and you’re doing discrimination against other People and that’s illegal
These Communist bastards will be sending us to the Gulag next. There’re on the brink of starting a civil war with the CCP coming over to intervene and save them.
It’s time to lock and load against the left
As far as this topic is concerned, the Biden Administration and the Democrats can wish in one hand and sh*t in the other and see which one fills up first. There isn’t a sane judge in this country that will let it fly.
Has anyone noticed this doesn’t happen in their neighborhood.
I wonder if this hair-brained scheme includes high rises on the beachfront of Martha’s Vinyard, Rehoboth, Hyannis Port or around Pelosi’s pad in Frisco? Want to bet it doesn’t?
Put a high rise with Crack smokers in front of Biden’s Delaware house. Done deal……
Just a matter of national control of everything like Communism did. This “Equity plan” will need to end up in the Supreme Court to get it nullified.
This is nothing new. It has been going for decades. Their called 15 min. Cities. It’s been happening all over my city.
That’s a lot of state legislatures pockets overflowing with money. Funny how democrats complain when the very people they blindly vote for, seem to always follow the direction of special interests, to their detriment. They never learn
That’s exactly what the communists do. The next step would be to confiscate your home and put additional families in it to live with you
Makes me wonder what ever happened to ‘states’ rights. This will cost us hundreds of millions to sue the pants off the federal government, because it’s none of their DAMN business! It’s also a continual trick of magicians (and democrats) to provide you something to decry while the real activity is hidden from plain view! (Gas stoves anyone?) They are the SWAMP we’re trying to clean up!
What I would like to say goodbye to is Democrats who keep taking away our freedoms, our liberties, our morals, our ethics, etc.!!! I don’t like the federal government telling me what to do and the more Democrats are in charge, the more they try to tell us to live our lives according to their agenda and mandates!!! I’m tired of it!!!!!
Government housing, sub-prime mortgages, HUD supplemented rentals…….all of these decrease the real estate values of neighborhoods. Just like lowering hiring and education standards, in the long run it hurts more people than it helps.
I don’t mind as long as these tall buildings are also built right next to their homes.
And there goes the neighborhood.
…as we continue our march towards being a third world nation!
Sounds like China to me.
Can i borrow your garden hose COMRAD. ??? Kyle L.
I’m ok with we the peons’ hard work and housing investment being trashed AFTER I see 300 unit high rise housing next door to the OBama’s luxury beach and DC gated mansions, next door to ”Joe Lie-den’s” beach house and gated mansion, next to Pelosi’s, Maxine Water’s mansions, next to Bill Gates and Geo Soros’s mansions, etc. The Commie tyrants trying to destroy middle class Americans need to lead by example.
This country needs a revolution. It’s comning. If not we will become a communist 3rd world nation. Kyle L.
We have NO freedoms left; we just exist for the benefit of&to the government, either local or frderal
What a dumb dumb idea!!
Why is hochul pushing for more housing in New York? People are leaving that state in droves.
These Progressively Communist wannabe Democrats want to rewrite American History by toppling historical statutes. It’s just like the Methodist Church wanting to sing all modern praise songs instead of the traditional Church hymns. He CAN’T rewrite History only learn from it!