Local zoning saved from Obama HUD rule by Trump administration after five-year fight

Rick Manning

In 2014, local zoning was slated for elimination by the Obama Department of Housing and Urban Development using a proposed rule known as “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” but something happened on the way to far left utopians taking over decisions on where housing should be placed in local communities – Americans for Limited Government stepped into the fray.
A June 5, 2014, press release titled, “Time to defund HUD racial zoning rule in appropriations vote” fired the first shot in a five and a half year battle to stop the federalization of local zoning.   Below is the original press statement,

Time to defund HUD racial zoning rule in appropriations vote
June 5, 2014, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens today issued the following statement urging the House of Representatives to defund implementation of the “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” rule that will empower the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to condition eligibility for community development block grants on redrawing zoning maps to achieve racial and income integration:
“Starting in October, HUD is empowering itself to redraw zoning maps in any locality that accepts any portion of the $3.5 billion a year in community development block grants from the federal government in an attempt to create evenly distributed neighborhoods based on racial composition and income. This is a utopian pipe dream, and social engineering at its worst.
“Neighborhoods are constituted not based on racial quotas, but on economics. Housing discrimination based on race has been illegal for decades. There is no discrimination in people choosing for themselves where they want to live, and yet that is exactly what HUD is seeking to regulate.
“HUD has no place in local zoning decisions, and it is up to the House of Representatives to defund this dangerous rulemaking through a rider to the Transportation and HUD appropriations bill coming up next week before the regulation’s projected October implementation.”

One day later, Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ) picked up the cause by introducing an amendment to the HUD appropriations bill defunding the implementation of AFFH which passed four days later in the House by a 240 – 181 margin.  However, Senate passage was much more problematic.
Over the course of the next three years, I had multiple meetings with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s staff facilitated by Erica Suares who is one of the unsung heroes in the Senate.  Those meetings always included at least five easy defunds that the Senate should pursue which were already in the House appropriations language.  The Gosar defund was always one of these.
Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) led the charge in the Senate with his legislation calling for ending the AFFH regulations, and his leadership helped keep the issue at the forefront in the appropriations defund battles.  Finally, on May 19, 2016, the Senate passed substitute language offered by Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) which defunded the planning tools for AFFH implementation by an 87 – 9 margin.
However, even with the House and Senate passing different language trying to stop what became known as Obamazoning, it wasn’t until the massive spending Omnibus of 2017 when the Collins language prohibiting HUD from implementing AFFH became part of the spending bill, and with that you would think the story would have ended.
But noooo, because this is DC where bad ideas only go into hibernation but never truly die, some “conservative advocates” decided that the regulations revising AFFH should force local governments to change their zoning laws to cut red tape to enable more rapid housing development.  While the problem of local red tape delaying new home and other developments for years is real, Americans for Limited Government stayed philosophically consistent.  If the federal government dictating local zoning outcomes was wrong under the Obama administration, then it was still wrong under the Trump administration no matter the outcome goals.
Finally after meetings with HUD, a personal conversation with Secretary Carson, attending a HUD stakeholder meeting in Chicago, and multiple conversations throughout the Trump administration, the final AFFH rule was filed.
And we won.  It was amended to preserve local control over zoning laws.

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A radio magnate wants to build cell towers in the California desert. Trump might help.

...Brown Butte Road flattened out, and suddenly there it was at the top of the hill: a cell tower, 196 feet high, looming over the open desert. It emitted a low, electronic hum. Gammon built the tower in 2001. Today it serves customers of AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon as they drive past on I-40, letting them make phone calls or read emails or stream videos. Gammon says the tower's reach extends 17 miles to the west and 12 miles to the east. It also serves San Bernardino County emergency responders. "It's a particularly valuable site," Gammon said. Gammon hopes to build dozens more towers like this one in California, Arizona and Nevada, extending high-speed wireless internet access to areas with poor service and bringing cell coverage for the first time to well-known dead spots, like the stretch of Highway 62 north of the Coachella Valley where phone calls are frequently dropped. But in California, Gammon says, an Obama-era conservation plan that protects millions of acres of open desert is making it harder for him to build that critical infrastructure. And the Trump administration seems to share Gammon's concerns. President Trump's Interior Department said in February it would consider changes to the Obama-era conservation plan, which covers more than 10 million acres of public land in the California desert. Department officials said they are looking for ways to increase solar and wind energy development, mining, grazing and off-road vehicle access. But they also suggested the desert plan creates barriers to improving internet access in rural areas — a priority for the president, who signed an executive order in January telling federal agencies to speed the approval of wireless broadband infrastructure. "Americans need access to reliable, affordable broadband internet service to succeed in today's information-driven, global economy. Currently, too many American citizens and businesses still lack access to this basic tool of modern economic connectivity," the executive order stated. "This problem is particularly acute in rural America."...MORE

Was it the intent of those proposing the desert plan to deny equal access to educational opportunities to rural children, and to risk the public safety of these residents by denying first responders adequate resources? Probably not  (although some would argue that hardcore enviros seek to limit human impacts whenever and wherever they can and by whatever  means available). That may not have been their intent but that is exactly the outcome they have caused, and this serves as an illustration of how these land preservation schemes result in negative consequences. No one can accurately predict what technological and other human innovations will occur in the next 15 years and therefor how these land set asides will affect the human condition, especially the rural population. Its hard enough to amend multiple-use plans so they are responsive to human progress, and nigh on to impossible to amend these environmental designations. Apparently the governing statute for this preserve will allow for such adaptation, but you can be assured any proposed changes will result in multiple lawsuits that will drag the process out for years. If this were a Wilderness instead of a preserve, the answer would be no from the get go. It would literally take an act of Congress to allow the construction and maintenance of additional cell towers. 

Most of these environmental designations are done at the behest of urban organizations, but most of the negative consequences are heaped upon the rural residents who live on or near the federal resource being "protected." These policies are anti-diversity in that they discriminate against rural families and their associated communities, who are being exploited by environmental organizations for their supposed philosophical/social gratification and/or the recreational enjoyment of the urban population. The end result is a less diverse population, and one in which one segment is being discriminated against for the exploitative benefit of another segment.

If this is not their intent, they should immediately amend their policy so as to allow the necessary flexibility in federal land use plans already in existence, and to no longer promote environmental designations that are so discriminatory and unable to adapt to human progress. If it is their intent, then they need to come clean and recognize the negative consequences of their proposals.

In the early history of the West, the feds intervened for economic development purposes and wreaked havoc upon the resource and some of the inhabitants in the process. The feds now intervene to prevent economic development and the advancement of the local population. In each instance the feds have harmed the West and its people. It is time the feds "got the hell out of Dodge" and let us pursue our own peaceful solutions. Adios.
 

The Zinke order on land-use planning and NEPA

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has directed the Bureau of Land Management to "identify and implement" revisions to the agency's land-use planning and environmental review processes just weeks after Congress killed an Obama-era rule that supporters say sought to do the same thing. The order is embedded below:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Yd5M8kgeNteVgzT1RMQ29qTHM/view?usp=sharing

BLM to review its planning process

After using the same basic planning approach for 38 years, the Bureau of Land Management has announced it will review how it develops its Resource Management Plans. “As I’ve met with elected leaders and citizens from across the West on BLM issues, I’ve consistently heard two things: first, the BLM needs to more effectively address landscape-level management challenges; and second, planning takes too long.” BLM Director Neil Kornze said in a statement. The decision was hailed by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership as a way to “modernize this approach and remedy its shortcomings. “For example, tracts of intact and undeveloped lands, commonly known as backcountry, are key BLM resources that aren’t adequately recognized and managed through existing agency planning guidance,” said Henri Bisson, former BLM deputy director for operations and BLM Alaska state director. Based on an initial review, the BLM intends to target changes to, in part, create a planning process that is responsive to change, allowing BLM to keep plans current through amendments; and to reduce the amount of time it takes to complete RMPs. “The main challenges the BLM face are incompatible development and land use, as well as the need for well-funded restoration,” said Ken Mayer, former director of the Nevada Department of Wildlife...more

Just relax.  Having Harry Reid's former aide heading this up should give everyone confidence.

Actually, my gut feeling on this is not good.  Notice who is praising it.  It appears to me they are looking for ways to have more wilderness, wildlife corridors and other set-asides from multiple use.  Go to the BLM page on this issue and you will find statements such as, "we hope to improve our land use planning process so that we can more effectively plan across landscapes at multiple scales and be more responsive to environmental and social change."  Sounds to me like environmentalists and urban residents are who they are aiming to please. 

BLM's planning process takes so long because of NEPA and lawsuits, not because of their approach.  

BLM says they want your comments, so you better check it out.

Crushing People Into Tight Housing Won't Cut CO2 Levels

 By LAWRENCE J. MCQUILLAN

'Smart growth" projects across the country aim to jam people into high-density housing near mass transit systems.

Proponents think this will make people abandon their automobiles, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But new research shows "stack-and-pack" housing is an ineffective way to reduce carbon dioxide levels.
Researchers at the University of California Energy and Resources Group in Berkeley used Census, weather, economic and transportation data — 37 variables in total — to estimate greenhouse gas emissions from the energy, transportation, food, goods and services consumed by U.S. households.

They calculated "household carbon footprints" for more than 31,000 U.S. ZIP codes (of approximately 43,000 total) in all 50 states and found that a "10-fold increase in population density in central cities yields only a 25% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions."

In other words, the number of people living in cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia and New York would have to increase 10 times — from 1.5 million in Philadelphia, for example, to 15 million — to yield a 25% reduction in CO2.

As the study's co-author, Christopher Jones, put it: "(A 10-fold increase) would require a really extraordinary transformation for very little benefit."

Stack-and-pack living is a blueprint for misery in urban America. Few people would want to live in such conditions. Yet this is exactly the vision that smart-growth advocates and their political allies are pushing.
For example, the regional smart-growth plan for the San Francisco Bay Area, approved last summer, calls for jamming an additional 2 million people into just 5% of the Bay Area's land over the next 27 years.

Similar plans exist, or are being discussed, in metro Chicago, El Paso, Minneapolis-St. Paul and a seven-county area of South Florida — including Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties — to name a few locations.

These regional government master plans effectively eliminate local control of communities. They also run into the Law of Unintended Consequences.

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