A blog about Marinwood-Lucas Valley and the Marin Housing Element, politics, economics and social policy. The MOST DANGEROUS BLOG in Marinwood-Lucas Valley.
Saturday, May 2, 2015
Study finds S.F.’s ethnic diversity dwindling
Study finds S.F.’s ethnic diversity dwindling
By C.W. Nevius
April 24, 2015
Ethnic diversity is in San Francisco’s DNA. Isn’t it?
![]() |
Diversity and choice are delicious. But when choices are forced, the outcomes only serve the few. |
Walk down virtually any street in the city and you’ll not only see a wide range of people of color, but chances are good that you’ll hear any number of non-English languages. This is a city that is proud of its diversity and has done what it can to encourage it.
To take it further, the organization projects that by 2040, there will be more white residents in San Francisco than people of color. That’s a big change from today, when 42 percent of the city’s residents are white.But a recent study says that if trends continue, San Francisco is headed in the opposite direction. In fact, the report from PolicyLink, a research and advocacy organization in conjunction with a University of Southern California program, says the white population in San Francisco is on a steady increase.
That’s striking because the study also predicts that in the same time period, the four adjoining counties (Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Marin) will become more than 50 percent diverse — which reflects the census projection that the United States will be a majority people-of-color nation by 2044.
So is San Francisco headed for a time when it becomes an affluent, white enclave surrounded by an ethnically diverse population?
“I saw that in the report, and it was definitely eyebrow raising,” says Fred Blackwell, CEO of the San Francisco Foundation, a community advocacy organization. “We may be entering into a kind of community crisis.”
Bucking a trend
What’s really striking is to look at a demographic map from 1980. Back then, San Francisco was an island of diversity, surrounded by white-majority counties. The PolicyLink projection for 2040 reverses that: The four other counties will have a majority of citizens of color, while San Francisco will be an island where more than half the residents are white.
Sarah Treuhaft, a PolicyLink director, admits that projecting trends 25 years in the future can be tricky. But by becoming more white, San Francisco is definitely bucking the national trend
“You don’t see that in many places,” she said. “We looked at all the counties in the country, and in only 25 did the people of color decline.”
But Egon Terplan, regional planning director for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, says there’s no reason to panic.
“Lots of things can happen over time,” Terplan said. “There’s a lot we can do with policy.”
Treuhaft doesn’t disagree. What she does point out, however, is the trend among younger residents.
“You can see the future by looking at the demographics of the youth population,” she said. In 1990, whites 18 and under were 22 percent of the youth population. Today, they are 33 percent.
Meanwhile, Asians under 18 are a significant part of the youth population — over 30 percent. But instead of increasing, that number is gradually sliding down: It was 36 percent in 1990, and 32 percent in 2007.
You will not be surprised to hear that the major cause of the demographic changes is affordability. Not only are housing costs rising, but wages have plateaued.
Blackwell says his group has been tracking the trend.
“You have people who have grown up in a specific area in San Francisco and have a very strong connection with those communities,” he said. “They want to make them stronger, so they work in nonprofits or as a teacher. What they end up with are salaries that don’t allow them to live in a community they care so much about. It’s kind of heartbreaking.”
'Concerning’
Meanwhile, the African American population continues to decline. In 1970, San Francisco was 13 percent black. Now it is 8 percent, and PolicyLink predicts it will be just 5 percent by 2040.Unfortunately, we’re still waiting for that awesome plan that finds a way to fund housing for the lower-middle class, which in San Francisco can mean families earning $50,000-$75,000.
A less diverse city “is not necessarily a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Blackwell said. “But it is concerning.”
![]() |
"San Francisco is so much better since Plan Bay Area. Thank you for all of the new Smart Growth housing " |
[Editor's Note: Plan Bay Area is displacing communities of all races and ethnicity through crony development policies. We think planning should be about the existing communities, not displacing communities for an imagined future. Every community is a home to someone. We should respect rights to live free without being forced from our community we love.]
Friday, May 1, 2015
How George Lucas’ bid for a Presidio museum misfired
How George Lucas’ bid for a Presidio museum misfired
By John KingApril 29, 2015 Updated: April 29, 2015 8:16pm

Photo: Erik Castro, Special To The Chronicle
Filmmaker George Lucas tried for three years to build a museum for his collection of digital and populist art before the plan combusted.
IMAGE 1 OF 5
Filmmaker George Lucas tried for three years to build a museum for his collection of digital and populist art before the plan combusted.
When the Presidio Trust announced last year that it was rejecting George Lucas’ bid to build a museum at Crissy Field, its leaders didn’t reveal that three days earlier they had been prepared to grant the “Star Wars” creator the land he sought.
Three members of the trust’s board of directors had met with Lucas at his office on Jan. 31, 2014, and the talking points prepared for them by Executive Director Craig Middleton included an offer to Lucas of “exclusive negotiations” for the 8 acres facing the bay if he agreed to change the look of his desired museum, a mock-classical temple that at one point had four ceremonial domes.
That revelation is among the previously undisclosed details of the strained relationship between the trust and the billionaire filmmaker found in several thousand pages of documents released to Lucas supporters this week in response to a Freedom of Information Act request signed by such luminaries as football legend Joe Montana, Twitter founder Biz Stone and Ron Conway, a venture capitalist with close ties to Mayor Ed Lee. The Presidio Trust also provided the documents to The Chronicle.
RELATED




Instead, Lucas rejected the offer. He complained about how he had been treated by the trust during his three-year quest to build a home for his collection of digital and populist art. On Feb. 3, 2014, the trust formally ended the competition, and five months later, Lucas was bound for Chicago.
Lucas first approached the trust “early in 2010,” according to an in-house review toward the end of the Crissy Field competition done for Middleton by senior staffer Tia Lombardi.
The land he sought was covered by a parking lot and a former commissary. It sits across from the marsh at Crissy Field, one of San Francisco’s most popular open spaces, with drop-dead views of the Marin Headlands and the Golden Gate Bridge. It also had been identified as a potential museum site as far back as the 2002 master plan for the Presidio, a 1,491-acre enclave within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
The initial design presented by Lucas is not part of the public record. But Lombardi’s later report described it as “very similar to the one in his final proposal. Some board members expressed tremendous enthusiasm, some were more ambivalent and some were perplexed.”
Instead of giving Lucas a yes or no, the trust waited until November 2012 before announcing a “request for concept proposals” with a March 1, 2013, deadline. During that time, the trust completed its design guidelines for the site while telling the Lucas team “two things,” Lombardi wrote: “that the building was not suitable for the site and that the trust would undertake a public process before determining the site’s use.”
Thursday, April 30, 2015
An Update on the MCA legal action on the SEIR.
Dear MCA Supporters:
Yesterday morning, Attorney Michael Graf (for Plaintiff MCA) and David Zaltzman (for Respondent County of Marin) appeared before Marin County Superior Court Judge Roy Chernus to present oral arguments and responses to the Court’s specific questions of the Tentative Ruling. The Court Hearing, which lasted nearly two hours, was well attended by members of the public. At the conclusion, Judge Chernus announced that the Court would render its Decision at a future date.
A Court Decision will be available on an unspecified date, sometime within thin the next 90 days.
Highlights:
Michael Graf expertly answered Honorable Judge Chernus’ questions and gave compelling argument in support of this lawsuit, which is outlined in his Opening Brief and Reply Brief (posted on www. alliancemarin.org).
I was particularly amused by the animated debate David Zaltzman gave on two points. First, he suggested that MCA conceded our claim against the county’s up zoning of 5000+ acres. We did not. This highlights though one of many egregious actions of the county and particularly the board of supervisors (BOS) in certifying their Countywide Plan (CWP) Amendment of 2012. This amendment up zoned over 5000 acres of land all over Marin without proper notice nor CEQA review. The county called it a “technical correction” but it was a most egregious and illegal action by the BOS to approve it. Citizens should REMEMBER that when they go to the ballot box next time they vote.
Second, he said citizens of Marin should be grateful George Lucas is building affordable housing in Grady Ranch, soon after he conceded that the maximum units studied under the master plan for the George Lucas Film Complex was only 40 not 240 units. Grady Ranch was never studied for 240 residential units in the CWP Environmental Impact Report (EIR), which they tiered off for the Housing Element Supplemental EIR. Thus one of the reasons MCA challenged the validity of the BOS certified SEIR. If you recall the judge’s tentative ruling, this issue was the only question Mr. Zaltzman was asked.
Mr. Zaltzman himself singled out George Lucas, one citizen out of 260,750 Marin residents affected by the actions of the county, as someone Marin should be grateful for?
We will keep you informed!
Thank you for all of your support, and thank you to all those who were able to attend this important Court Hearing yesterday! Have good thoughts for MCA that the Lady Justice will do what she does best.
Yesterday morning, Attorney Michael Graf (for Plaintiff MCA) and David Zaltzman (for Respondent County of Marin) appeared before Marin County Superior Court Judge Roy Chernus to present oral arguments and responses to the Court’s specific questions of the Tentative Ruling. The Court Hearing, which lasted nearly two hours, was well attended by members of the public. At the conclusion, Judge Chernus announced that the Court would render its Decision at a future date.
A Court Decision will be available on an unspecified date, sometime within thin the next 90 days.
Highlights:
Michael Graf expertly answered Honorable Judge Chernus’ questions and gave compelling argument in support of this lawsuit, which is outlined in his Opening Brief and Reply Brief (posted on www. alliancemarin.org).
I was particularly amused by the animated debate David Zaltzman gave on two points. First, he suggested that MCA conceded our claim against the county’s up zoning of 5000+ acres. We did not. This highlights though one of many egregious actions of the county and particularly the board of supervisors (BOS) in certifying their Countywide Plan (CWP) Amendment of 2012. This amendment up zoned over 5000 acres of land all over Marin without proper notice nor CEQA review. The county called it a “technical correction” but it was a most egregious and illegal action by the BOS to approve it. Citizens should REMEMBER that when they go to the ballot box next time they vote.
Second, he said citizens of Marin should be grateful George Lucas is building affordable housing in Grady Ranch, soon after he conceded that the maximum units studied under the master plan for the George Lucas Film Complex was only 40 not 240 units. Grady Ranch was never studied for 240 residential units in the CWP Environmental Impact Report (EIR), which they tiered off for the Housing Element Supplemental EIR. Thus one of the reasons MCA challenged the validity of the BOS certified SEIR. If you recall the judge’s tentative ruling, this issue was the only question Mr. Zaltzman was asked.
Mr. Zaltzman himself singled out George Lucas, one citizen out of 260,750 Marin residents affected by the actions of the county, as someone Marin should be grateful for?
We will keep you informed!
Thank you for all of your support, and thank you to all those who were able to attend this important Court Hearing yesterday! Have good thoughts for MCA that the Lady Justice will do what she does best.
The Housing Revolution Will Not Be Televised
The Housing Revolution Will Not Be Televised
The housing revolution will not be televised: You will wake up in your Eichler or single family home to find the single family home in the lot next door being replaced by an apartment block.
Posted by Richard Hall ,
The Housing Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Why is this Happening?
Yes. We have a perfect storm. Developers are joining forces with transportation advocates fixated on "transit oriented development" (apartment blocks near transit) and the social equity lobby (everyone has the right to a home in Marin). Then there's HUD - the US Department of Housing and Urban Development which is looking at counties like Marin and Westchester, NY with an aim to address a perceived racial imbalance caused by over-building of single family homes (amongst other factors).
EFF warns of Big Brother biometrics time bomb
EFF warns of Big Brother biometrics time bomb
09.03.2012 15:11

EFF warns of Big Brother biometrics time bomb
The passing of a new law in France paving the way for a biometric database and requiring all citizens to carry a biometric ID card is a time bomb for civil liberties, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has warned.
On Tuesday, the French National Assembly passed a law for the creation of a national biometric database, ostensibly to fight identity fraud.
However, the EFF warns that biometric databases pose a mission-creep threat since the data can be used for reasons beyond identity fraud.
It points out that governments are increasingly demanding storage of citizens' biometric data on chips embedded into identity cards or passports and centrally held on government databases, with little regard to citizens' civil liberties.
The new laws compel the creation of an ID card that will contain information such as fingerprints, photograph, home address, height and eye colour. New passports will also contain the chip.
A second, optional chip will be created for online authentication for e-government services and e-commerce.
EFF points out that France doesn't have a good track record for protecting biometric information - last year, the French government confirmed that 10pc of biometric passports in circulation were fraudulently obtained.
The EFF describes the new law as invasive and could bring undue interference into people's lives.
It also warns the passing of the law is disproportionate and one motive could be to prop up French smart card and biometrics companies who have been lobbying heavily for the creation of a biometric ID card.
“History has shown that databases in France created for one purpose have been used for others: In 1998, for example, France created a national DNA database of sex offenders, but its scope was expanded to include data from those convicted of other serious violent criminal offences and terrorism. The database was later expanded to include the data of those who committed a wide range of offences. Anyone suspected of any crime is now compelled to submit a DNA sample, as well.
“Moreover, the measure is non-proportionate, given that there are less than 10,000 annual instances of fraudulent identity documents reported in France. It is difficult to argue that this justifies fingerprinting and face digitisation of an estimated 45m individuals and storing this information in a central biometric database," the EFF railed.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Making up his own Rules on Housing

US President Barack Obama speaks during the Democratic Issues Conference February 14, 2014 in Cambridge, MarylandPhoto: AFP/Getty
Last month, President Obama declared he’ll “act on my own,” that he doesn’t need Congress to exercise his power.
“We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation. I’ve got a pen . . . and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions,” he asserted. “One of the things that I’m going to be talking to my Cabinet about is how do we use all the tools available to us.”
He’s already made good on his promise to act unilaterally — delaying the ObamaCare mandate on businesses again last week and changing the rules for immigration enforcement.
But what Obama didn’t say is that, behind the scenes, he’s radically increasing the government’s reach. His tools aren’t laws or even executive orders — it’s thousands of new pages of new rules in the Federal Register, the nation’s official book of regulations, controlling everything from home finance to car deals to city zoning.
An unelected, unappointed shadowy network of leftie advocates are rewriting these rules — posing a direct threat to Congress’ legislative authority. Yet alarmingly few lawmakers are aware of its clout. Likewise, few in the private sector know about its unchecked power and influence over business and finance — or even local housing and school policies.
Schools can’t suspend bullies
One troubling new area of regulation: rules for discipline at your children’s schools, so that teachers can no longer kick students who misbehave out of the classroom. They’re relaxing the protocols for punishing even violent kids, compounding fears about classroom safety in a post-Newtown world.
New school-discipline guidelines issued last month by Education Secretary Arne Duncan are based on a “framework” recently formulated by the New York-based Dignity in Schools Campaign.
Following Dignity’s recommendations, the administration is pressuring schools to keep disruptive minority students in the classroom. The new federal guidelines call for a moratorium on suspensions, now demonized as “racist” because they have a “disparate impact” on black students. They also discourage school authorities from bringing police onto campuses even in some violent cases.
“Racial discrimination in school discipline is a real problem today,” Duncan claimed in announcing the new policy. But chances are he outsourced this “solution.”
“I doubt he had anything to do with the actual drafting of these guidelines,” said former Education Department official Hans Bader, maintaining he gave the job to “left-wing radicals.”
Indeed, Duncan’s guidelines adopt Dignity’s recommendation that schools enroll troubled kids in “restorative circles” and other culturally sensitive programs instead of suspending them.
Under this “positive approach,” offenders are allowed to negotiate the consequences for their bad behavior, which usually involves anger-management counseling and “dialogue sessions,” in which teachers join unruly students in “talking circles” to foster greater “cultural understanding.” Talk invariably turns to racism and “white bias.”
Dignity says the powwows “combat bias that contributes to disproportionate discipline.”
Of course, they also provide rowdy minorities an excuse for continued bad behavior.
New York City public schools recently adopted “restorative counseling” as an alternative to suspensions, now banned as a punishment for one-time minor infractions.
“Taking a restorative approach to discipline changes the fundamental questions that are asked when a behavioral incident occurs,” the department’s new discipline code states. Instead of asking who’s to blame and how they should be punished, it addresses “underlying factors” that lead youth to act out.
The administration is tying school funding to compliance with its discipline guidelines, while at the same time threatening discrimination lawsuits.
But relaxed discipline policies threaten to undo the benefits of zero tolerance policies started in 2004. Under the Impact School initiative, New York schools partnered with the NYPD to crack down on campus crime, resulting in a 55% plunge in violent school incidents, according to city data.
Forced integration of the suburbs
The fingerprints of radical social engineers are all over housing policy as well.
Affordable-housing zealots helped craft a sweeping new federal regulation that created a controversial “housing-discrimination database,” which the administration hopes to use to reshape the demographics of every neighborhood in America.
It’s part of an ambitious agenda to eliminate “racial segregation,” ZIP code-by-ZIP code, through the systematic dismantling of “exclusionary” building ordinances across America.
It’s started here in New York’s Westchester County, where HUD is withholding millions of dollars in funding until the area relaxes restrictions on subsidized housing.
But that’s just the beginning of a nationwide campaign to force suburbs to accept Section 8 and other low-income residents.
“The battle for zoning in Westchester County [will be] the battle everywhere,” warned Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino. “This is about changing every block, every neighborhood to the viewpoint of federal bureaucrats at HUD.”
The agency’s 34-page “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” mandate, soon to be codified as law in the Federal Register, is the brainchild of the National Fair Housing Alliance, a radical leftist group based in Washington.
NFHA helped draft the legal and technical language in the regulation, and coached other activists to propose ways to strengthen the rule in public comments solicited by HUD. NFHA even prepared letter-writing templates using the same language for other activist groups.
NFHA worked closely with Sara K. Pratt, HUD’s chief of fair-housing enforcement. HUD officially lists NFHA, which happens to be Pratt’s old shop, as a “partner.” The two recently announced a joint media campaign “to fight housing discrimination,” for which Pratt’s office awarded NFHA more than $2 million in grants. Pratt worked several years for NFHA as a director, trainer and consultant.
“HUD uses a network of crony advocates to help create, improve and finalize new rules,” said Cornelia Mrose, a housing analyst who recently prepared a study examining the development of HUD’s suburban integration rule for the American Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank in Washington. “And it uses this same network of crony advocates to execute and enforce rules.”
NFHA conducts discrimination investigations for HUD using “testers” to pose as renters and homebuyers in minority communities across the country.
Added Mrose, “There’s no division of power here — it’s all rolled into one.”
She warns the close collaboration between activists and federal agencies within the Obama administration has “corrupted” the otherwise public rules-making process and created a powerful “crony advocacy empire” impervious to influence from average citizens.
While citizen opposition was passionate — decrying the regulation as “forced integration” and “affirmative action on a ZIP code level,” while warning of Section 8 housing crime and lower property values — HUD disregarded them as “low-quality comments.”
Recreating the mortgage crisis
As if that weren’t enough, Obama’s new credit cop, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is out to recreate the conditions that caused the 2008 mortgage collapse by pressuring banks to make loans to people who can’t afford them in the name of racial “fairness.” And it’s happening behind closed doors.
CFPB won’t let private citizens or reporters into meetings with its 25 paid advisers, the Consumer Advisory Board, whose taxpayer-compensated members include trial lawyers who make a living suing banks, former ACORN activists, and even a member of the Democratic National Committee. Some have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grant money to ferret out discrimination in housing and lending.
“They want input from liberal activists and Democratic partisans without public scrutiny,” said Competitive Enterprise Institute official John Berlau, who last year represented a Mississippi businessman barred from a Consumer Advisory Board meeting in what Berlau says was a “clear violation” of the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
One influential CFPB adviser, Ellen Seidman, happens to be one of the architects of the disastrous housing policies that caused the mortgage crisis. Seidman encouraged subprime lending in “underserved” communities as a top Clinton bank regulator enforcing the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). “Growth in the subprime credit market indicates that credit needs in many low- and moderate-income areas are being met,” she said in 1999. She also cheered the relaxation of credit standards and the development of the subprime securities market.
“Without CRA as an impetus,” Seidman said, “this market would likely not have developed.”
Now Seidman is helping rewrite the rules for home lending. CFPB recently released new mortgage rules that, despite claims of tightening standards, require no minimum credit scores or down payments and even count payments from “government assistance programs” as qualifying income for low-income borrowers.
Radical advisers also have opened up a new “fair lending” front — car loans.
CFPB has sued the nation’s largest car lender, Ally Bank, for $100 million over discrimination charges.
Ally denies the allegations, arguing it prices for risk, not race. Indeed, the administration failed to take credit scores and other key risk factors into account in its investigation — just as it failed to take them into account shaking down almost three dozen mortgage lenders — including Bank of America and Wells Fargo — for a combined $810 million over alleged lending discrimination.
Discriminating against minority borrowers would be a deplorable crime if true. But investigators have no direct evidence it’s occurring. Cases are based exclusively on statistics showing “disparities” in loan outcomes by race. For the first time, federal civil-rights enforcers are relying on stats, rather than actual acts or intent, to prove racism.
They assume “statistically significant” disparities in loan rates between whites and minorities proves lenders are discriminating against minorities. But there’s a fundamental flaw: They’re not comparing whites and minorities with the same credit backgrounds.
They’re missing their credit scores, debt-to-income ratios and other key information that influences lending decisions (like down payments and trade-ins) in their computer screens. In short, they’re making reckless allegations.
Though investigators argue crunching the raw data is sufficient to prove racism if it shows “significant” racial gaps in loan pricing, they won’t define “significant” — despite repeated bipartisan requests by Congress.
Critics complain even the dubious statistical threshold they’re using to trigger discrimination investigations is arbitrary and capricious.
“CFPB refuses to release any sort of analysis or methodology as to how they reached their conclusions,” National Auto Dealers Association spokesman Baily Wood said.
‘Working the system’
In the 1970s, Saul Alinsky, the Chicago socialist, father of community organizing and Obama idol, wrote “Rules for Radicals” as a training manual for stealth “revolution.” He advised activists to cut their hair and clean up their mouths so they could “work in the system” and change it from the “inside.”
Only by operating inside the establishment, he said, could this new “vanguard” of leftists really hope to redistribute power and wealth “from the Haves to the Have-Nots.”
The strategy has worked beyond his wildest dreams.
It took a few decades, but Alinsky’s coat-and-tie radicals are fully deployed inside the power corridors of Washington — including, of course, the West Wing, where Alinsky’s star pupil controls the show. And they’re collaborating with the most militant elements of the nonprofit sector.
Together, both the washed and unwashed of Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” gang are now writing the rules regulating industry and society.
Paul Sperry is a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of “The Great American Bank Robbery.”
Monday, April 27, 2015
The 800-Pound HUD Gorilla
I write about big government's corrosive effects on civil society.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
OPINION 2,570 views
The 800-Pound HUD Gorilla
[Editors Note: Westchester County, NY is HUDs first "Grand Experiment" . Marin County is the second.]
They say the states are supposed to be the laboratories for legislative creativity. We can watch what works and what doesn’t, emulate the best and avoid worst, and improve the lot of everyone.
But what happens when the mad scientist is the federal government, cramming an experiment down the throat of a particular state and county? What if their process is textbook “arbitrary and capricious“, and yet they clearly aspire to go national with the results, regardless of efficacy?
Such is the saga going on in Westchester County New York, where County Executive Rob Astorino is embroiled in a nearly four-year-old legislative and financial nightmare brought on by his predecessor Andrew Spano. Astorino, a Republican, defeated the three-term incumbent Democrat by an odds-crushing 16 points in November of 2009, and gained unprecedented voter support by vowing to challenge what became law very late in his campaign. Astorino described the source of the problem, in his recent “State of the County” speech:
Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino“If you think Albany is bad, wait until I tell you about Washington and the housing settlement. A quick history: The County was sued in 2006 under the False Claims Act of 1863. The charge was that the County accepted Federal dollars from the department of Housing and Urban Development, but failed to study whether race is a factor in housing opportunities. In 2009, former County Executive Andrew Spano and the Board of Legislators settled the case, and critically important, there was never a finding of wrong-doing on the part of the County, or an admission of guilt in the settlement. Instead of going to court, the County and the Federal government both agreed to settle under the following terms: The County would spend at least $51 million dollars to build 750 units of housing for lower income people in 31 so-called eligible or mostly white communities by the end of 2016.”
Combating this “mostly white” designation, by any means necessary, is apparently the crux of HUD’s mission. To HUD’s way of thinking, surely these communities are “mostly white” only because of racial discrimination, or as Astorino went on to describe, zoning practices that they think have the net effect of being racially discriminatory:
“The Federal government has a very different agenda and vision for Westchester. In fact, HUD calls us, its ‘Grand Experiment.’ That means Washington bureaucrats, who you will never see or meet, want the power to determine who will live where, and how each neighborhood will look. Now what’s at stake is the fundamental right of our cities, towns and villages to plan and zone for themselves. This ‘home rule’ is guaranteed by the New York State Constitution. HUD thinks it can trample on Westchester, because it has the misguided notion that zoning and discrimination are the same thing. They are not. Zoning restricts what can be built, not who lives there.”
Indeed, Astorino has gone out of his way to distinguish true racial discrimination, which he rightfully says should be vigorously prosecuted. Since 2010, HUD’s representatives have been asked to provide evidence of such discrimination. But as anyone would have expected when asked to prove a negative, providing such evidence has not been possible. No worries, HUD has continued undeterred.
As of April 2013, 305 units of “affordable housing” have been built, which is ahead of the year-end target of 300 units. HUD remains unsatisfied. A provision of the original settlement, “source of income legislation” has become their most recent focus.
“Source of income legislation” would state that no landlord can refuse to rent to a tenant on the basis of where they source their income from. Therefore, a most obvious and typical form of credit underwriting on behalf of the landlord is declared null and void. If your “income” is in fact a Section 8 housing voucher, that is not allowed to matter. Critics will at this point chime in that Section 8 housing recipients are required to pay as much as 30% of the rent themselves. Yet this is precisely the portion of the rent that many landlords experienced with Section 8 tenants find themselves getting stiffed on.
The details of this soap opera are legion and tedious. Astorino is up for re-election this fall, running against the Democratic mayor Noam Bramson of the very prominent Westchester city, New Rochelle. With the Chairman of the Westchester County Board of Legislators, Kenneth Jenkins also being a Democrat, the opportunities for political gamesmanship are equally legion and tedious.
However, the principles of fairness underlying the issue are so straightforward that even staunch Democrats are appalled. After all, plenty of landlords,
Sara Pratt, HUD Asst Secretary of Enforcement Speaks to Marin
Here is the full speech by Sara Pratt of HUD speaking before the Fair Housing of Marin Conference.
It is a great perspective on the future of affordable housing in Marin where HUD will play a huge role with it's politics on local communities.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
San Quentin Showdown Ross Valley Sanitary District Settlement on April 22, 2015
Citizens gathered at the Ross Valley Sanitary District on April 22, 2015 to protest the closed door settlement that will give away a multimillion dollar asset to Central Marin Sanitary District. The deal is bad for ratepayers and alleged to be motivated by developers who want to build a high rise development where San Quentin now stands.
Supervisor Steve Kinsey has had his eye on "Kinseyland" to fullfill his vision of an urban Marin. Supervisor Katie Rice played a questionable role in the one sided settlement as a "facilitator".
Tom Gaffney, water and sewer consultant, has deep financial ties the sewage industry and serves as RVSD president. Citizens have identified undisclosed financial dealings and ask that he remove himself from voting on the settlement. Particularly strong testimony from the public(7:30), (11:20), (16:19).
(28:00)Frank Egger, former Mayor of Fairfax has served the citizens in various roles for 40 years. His vision and wisdom has made an indelible mark on the county and the livable village of Fairfax. He knows how political games are played and suspects the behind the scenes political manuevering by Katie Rice and Kinsey.
(34:00) Bornstein says "He listens to Frank Egger" but does not address any of the serious issued raised. It seems to be plain attack on his character without any substance.
(35:00) Mary Sylla, a close political ally and friend of Katie Rice calls Frank Egger , "A liar" after his presentation.
(38:39) Pam Meigs expresses outrage at the childish attacks on Frank Eggers's character. Though she knows that the board has the votes to make the settlement, she warns of the political fallout because the citizens object to the San Quentin vision and the stripping of RVSD assets.
(40:00) After two hours of deliberation, the board made advice to counsel but did not vote on the settlement. Pam Meigs advised the public that the terms could be made public but the board voted to keep it secret.
Why is secrecy necessary? Politics of course. All parties to the settlement know the terms EXCEPT the public.
HUD Targets Zoning In Suburbs As Racist
![]() |
Shaun Donovan, HUD Secretary |
HUD Targets Zoning In Suburbs As Racist

December 13, 2013 6:00 PM
The Department of Housing and Urban Development plans to expand its view of discriminatory housing practices to include local zoning rules to control building in suburban neighborhoods, a New York county official battling the federal agency warns.Rob Astorino, the Republican executive of Westchester County, says his Manhattan suburb illustrates what the rest of the country can expect under a sweeping anti-discrimination regulation HUD is expected to finalize by Christmas.
"The battle for zoning in Westchester County (will be) the battle everywhere," Astorino said Tuesday during an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) briefing on Capitol Hill.
HUD has cut off $17 million in funding to Westchester for refusing to sue local municipalities to modify zoning ordinances to accommodate more subsidized housing. HUD claims the ordinances, which like almost every locality in America, set limits on building density, are racially "exclusionary.
"HUD has said that even quarter-acre (lot) single-family zoning, in their view, may very well be discriminatory and perpetuate 'segregation,'" Astorino said. "And (it) must be looked at, and even maybe attacked.
Disparities Vs. Discrimination
Over the past few years, Westchester, one of the toniest communities in America, has built 400 affordable-housing units in mostly white neighborhoods. It's under federal orders to build 350 more at a total cost of $51 million.But HUD's not satisfied. "This is about changing every block, every neighborhood to the viewpoint of federal bureaucrats at HUD," Astorino said.
Under the Obama administration, housing officials no longer limit their view of housing discrimination to overt acts such as landlords and Realtors steering minorities away from predominantly white areas. They now consider any race-neutral policy that has the "effect" of creating "disparate access" for minorities to good jobs, schools and other suburban "assets" to be a racist "barrier.
To close racial "disparities," HUD in its new rule proposes tying federal funding for counties and cities to suburban integration of urban blacks and Latinos.
"This rule is needed to facilitate efforts to overcome barriers to fair housing choice," states the proposed rule, which runs about 30 pages.
Adding 'Teeth'
"There are many different types of impediments to fair housing choice, including building and zoning codes, processes for site selection for low-income housing, lack of public services in low-income areas (and) less favorable mortgage lending for minority borrowers," HUD added in the rule, titled Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing. "Some of these impediments may prevent people from moving out of racially concentrated areas of poverty and neighborhoods that perpetuate disparities in access to community assets.
While nonprofit housing groups overwhelmingly favor the rule, most of the almost 900 total comments submitted to HUD oppose it. Formal comments run 2-to-1 against it. Many critics called it "social engineering," while others said it was "racist in nature" or "anti-federalist." A common complaint concerned the "higher rates of crime" that frequently accompany subsidized housing.
HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan explains he's adding "teeth" to the 1968 Fair Housing Act to "repair the damage" minority communities have endured from subprime foreclosures. He noted that the mortgage crisis and recession wiped out "more than half of African-American wealth.
"We cannot have a healthy America if communities of color are hurting," he told the NAACP this summer while promising tougher housing regulations. "In too many of our hardest-hit communities — no matter how hard a child or her parents work — the life chances of that child, even her life span, (are) determined by the ZIP code she grows up in.
Meanwhile, HUD is mapping every neighborhood in America for "discrimination patterns" using sophisticated "geospatial" software. It plans to make the data readily available to affordable-housing pressure groups, such as the National Fair Housing Alliance and National Community Reinvestment Coalition, that receive millions in agency funding and work closely with HUD in crafting regulations.
Cities that show the worst "segregation" — such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Atlanta, Memphis, Charlotte and Raleigh, N.C., Indianapolis, and Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio — will be aggressively "targeted" under the new rule.
Counties and cities receiving HUD grants will be required to submit detailed integration plans to Washington. Rejected plans threaten funding.
"This new rule is frightening because you're talking about 'disparate impact,'" Astorino said.
"Disparate impact" discrimination claims rely on statistics to indicate racism, rather than actual acts, a much lower standard of proof. HUD formalized the use of disparate impact in fair-housing investigations in a separate regulation earlier this year. Meanwhile, the Justice Department and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are using the dubious theory against banks to enforce fair-lending laws.
"Discrimination in HUD's view no longer has to be behavior or criminal acts or anything like that. It is statistics," Astorino said. "And so what they're saying is, if a particular neighborhood has a disproportionate amount of whites, then de facto that community is (exclusionary). And HUD will be the final arbiter on land-use decisions based upon the statistics that they provide going forward.
Added Astorino: "Their end goal clearly is getting rid of as much of zoning as possible in the neighborhoods that they want to rid the zoning from.
AEI fellow Ed Pinto warned that the "social engineering" strings attached to HUD funding could end up harming communities if they aren't severed.
The former chief Fannie Mae credit officer recounted other "grandiose, utopian schemes" of HUD that have ended in disaster, including its failed public housing projects in Detroit, Chicago and other blighted inner cities, and its affordable-housing mandates that sped Fannie's and Freddie Mac's recent collapse.
"The rest of the country needs to understand how this will affect them if these rules go through," Astorino said.
Some are heeding his warnings. Officials in Rindge, N.H., for example, are reconsidering accepting HUD grant money out of fear the agency will demand changes in the town's zoning laws.
Only, HUD doesn't plan on using just carrots to motivate municipalities to carry out its agenda. It's also wielding a big stick.
"We are stepping up fair-housing enforcement," Donovan warned.
In 2011 alone, HUD charged more cases of housing discrimination than it had in the previous decade. All told, over the past three years its investigations have extracted $65 million in minority payouts and penalties from more than 25,000 defendants.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Marin County Supervisors voted unanimously to a voluntary compliance agreement to receive HUD Grants. Susan Adams offers Marinwood Plaza as a location for one of the buildings.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)