Ron Sims wants to “integrate” wealthy neighborhoods
Ron Sims has moved up to being reported in the New York Times! He is working on an agreement in Westchester County that is a new interpretation of what the Fair Housing Act requires, he is making a call for sweeping social justice and a major assault on the status quo.
It sounds like he’s getting pretty comfortable in his new job as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development:
The agreement is a result of a 2007 lawsuit arguing that Westchester had made false claims to the government when it applied for federal housing money and asserted it was furthering fair housing. A federal judge ruled that Westchester had, in fact, “utterly failed” to meet its obligations, particularly in its most affluent and least integrated communities.
“This is consistent with the president’s desire to see a fully integrated society,” said Ron Sims, the deputy secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which supported and helped broker the agreement. “Until now, we tended to lay dormant. This is historic, because we are going to hold people’s feet to the fire.”
Of the many fault lines in American life — school desegregation, Social Security, guns, immigration, health care policy, abortion — residential desegregation has been so charged it has all but disappeared from view. It’s not a third rail — it’s off the tracks. So exactly how one defines “a fully integrated society” and how aggressively the government pursues it will determine whether this is an isolated settlement with limited goals or something with the potential to make the uproar over health care policy seem like a sedate ripple.
“Since the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968 there has never been a sustained commitment on the part of the government at any level, Democratic, Republican or bipartisan, to changing these residential patterns,” said Craig Gurian, executive director of the Anti-Discrimination Center, which filed the lawsuit. “I think we may be at the beginning of the first sustained commitment to open, inclusionary communities that we have seen.” – NY Times
While most everybody would agree that anybody should be able to buy a luxury home if they can afford it, fewer would agree that a low income home should be required to be built next door to it. I wonder if this means the NY times is going the way of the Seattle PI.
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