Obama's War on Property

Obama and his Democratic allies are busy undermining the fundamental principle of private property rights.  Too many Americans today do not understand the importance of property rights or the danger of undermining them on other rights.  As described by  President Calvin Coolidge: “Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing.  The one cannot be preserved if the other be violated.”

In case you have not aware of the current attack in Baltimore County, the County Council will be considering a bill that will force those who rent out their property to accept Section 8 vouchers. And HUD is now promoting forcing them to accept those with a criminal record. AND the County Executive has agreed to building 1000 houses at $300,00 per house to move inner city residents into "prosperous neighborhoods."   Who pays for this housing? The hard working citizens who are struggling to pay their mortgage on their $100,000 town house.

We have come a long way from a free society.  Is it possible to go back?

Obama’s War on America and Property

CanadaFreePress.com

Recently Baltimore County came to a settlement with the City over a scheme to colonize affluent County neighborhoods with HUD housing. According to Fox News:

“With crime in the inner city soaring and many of Baltimore’s neighborhoods plagued by gang violence, there was a push to integrate those communities into neighborhoods in the surrounding county. The NAACP and others sued Baltimore County over alleged housing segregation – and the county has now settled, agreeing to spend $30 million over the next 10 years to build 1,000 homes in affluent neighborhoods.

On top of that, the Baltimore County executive is planning to put forward legislation outlawing the practice of landlords denying – or as some see it, discriminating against – Section 8 tenants.

“I think it’s important that we make sure that opportunities are available to everyone within the region,” County Executive Kevin Kamenetz said.”

First it should be pointed out that integration was never the primary purpose of the Fair Housing Act or any subsequent legislation; the purpose was to grant civil rights to protected classes, allowing them to live where they choose. Integration was a tool used to enforce civil rights in education, not in housing. Nowhere is integration even implied as a fundamental right in the Constitution, nor is the benefits of living in a good neighborhood.

What is very interesting is that the County plans to force landlords to accept government funding of unqualifiable tenants via Section 8. Section 8 is a difficult program to deal with; they require a series of inspections, often very demanding and far above what local municipalities require of landlords, and they have a bad habit of simply stopping funding at inopportune moments for any and every reason. This should not stand in court, but in the era of Obama - who has appointed fully 324 Federal judges as of April 12 of 2016 - chances are good that it will not be struck down.

And since when is opportunity a civil right? Opportunity is the fallout of civil rights, not a right in itself, and property rights are by far the cornerstone of all civil rights. President Calvin Coolidge once said;

“Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing.  The one cannot be preserved if the other be violated.”

And the philosopher John Locke, so influential to the Founding Fathers, said;

“Government has no other end than the preservation of property.”

Or as John Adams put it:

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”

HUD has been pursuing a scheme to build low-income housing in affluent neighborhoods nationwide

Yet here we are in modern America promoting the idea that property rights must be abridged to “grant” civil rights to a certain protected class. And this is not just a quirk of Baltimore; HUD has been pursuing a scheme to build low-income housing in affluent neighborhoods nationwide, ostensibly as a way to redress discrimination. According toCNS News:

“On Wednesday, two weeks after getting the Supreme Court’s okay, the Obama administration issued a final rule intended to move poor people “into communities that are rich with opportunity,” as HUD Secretary Julián Castro phrased it in his news release.

The new regulation is all about “affirmatively furthering fair housing,” HUD says.”

In short, the Administration plans to colonize predominantly white and Asian communities with likely Democratic voters. This is a dirty political trick, one designed to overcome the predominance of Republicans in governorships and state legislatures, who control redistricting. The Obama Administration found an easy way to make the power to control districts mute by simply colonizing those districts and thus diluting the vote. It is a sort of reverse gerrymandering, where instead of creating districts they create demographics.

Blockbusting is illegal. Blockbusting is a conscious attempt to trigger panic selling by suggesting something dire is coming - like large low-income housing being built in a neighborhood thus reducing property values. Essentially HUD is blockbusting on a national scale here. This can also be seen as a due process violation, because the construction of HUD housing will lower property values, thus constitute an eminent domain taking without due compensation.http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/eminent+domain

Not content to rest on his laurels with this triumph over America’s fundamental right, Julian HUD director Castro (fitting name) now wants to force landlords to rent to convicted criminals, a non-protected class.

His reasoning is that, since minorities make up the preponderance of convicted criminals, a prudent policy of denying criminals tenancy is de facto an act of racial discrimination and thus grounds for punitive action by HUD.

“Right now, many housing providers use the fact of a conviction, any conviction, regardless of what it was for or how long ago it happened, to indefinitely bar folks from housing opportunities,” Mr. Castro said in a statement.

“Many people who are coming back to neighborhoods are only looking for a fair chance to be productive members, but blanket policies like this unfairly deny them that chance,” added Castro.”

Mr. Castro intends to use the full power of his office to compel property owners to rent to people they would never rent to otherwise, and to put their good tenants in jeopardy in the process. There have been a number of court rulings on this very thing, and in point of fact it has been made plain that landlords are legally responsible for knowingly renting to potentially dangerous felons.

Eugene Volokh gives us the rundown on that:

“According to the case that I cited (a case where the University of Kansas knowingly rented to an ex-convict who raped another resident), a landlord’s duty of reasonable care to his tenants would require him to take steps to protect the tenants against criminal attack by cotenants — presumably, according to some of the commenters who were defending the Kansas decision, by evicting the tenant, and (I take it) by not renting to the tenant in the first place if the landlord knows or has reason to know of the past conviction. And if indeed criminal background checks are cheap, it would be reasonable for the landlord to do that check and learn of the conviction.”

Landlords are liable for illegal activity on the premises

Indeed, landlords are liable for illegal activity on the premises, and can face the following penalties:

• You could face fines for allowing the illegal activity to continue to occur
• You could face criminal penalties for knowingly allowing the illegal activity to occur
• The rental property can be confiscated by the government, but this is only in extreme cases
• In addition to criminal penalties, there can be other negative consequences for landlords. These can include:
1. Rental property value can drop, thus making it hard to find and keep tenants
2. If a tenant or anyone else in the neighborhood is injured or annoyed by the drug dealing, you could be sued on the grounds that the rental property constitutes a public nuisance that threatens public safety and morals.

The most potent defense in the landlord’s arsenal is the application process; the landlord has the power to deny tenancy. It is the most prudent and logical course of action. Yet HUD is going to force landlords to accept criminals, and do so in a manner that will keep the government’s hands clean; no legislation or executive orders involved, so the landlords wind up bearing all of the legal liability.

Interestingly enough, this will have the reverse of the desired effect; landlords will have to tighten their screening process, making credit and employment requirements far stricter. The end result will be that poor people will be denied more frequently, as will the self-employed or under employed. Right now there are a number of places that specialize in low income housing and they will have to change that, driving retirees into the streets. Contractors and other seasonal workers will find it hard to rent property since their credit is often less than perfect during the slow season. The self-employed will be out. And always the applications will have to be run, lest an accusation of bias be leveled by HUD, so a person who is likely to be denied cannot be told that is the case, and he or she will have to lose the application fee, costing them money.

This will destroy low and middle- income housing.

It is also a violation of a number of state and local ordinances. Here in St. Louis an unconstitutional law that required landlords to obtain licenses from St. Louis County (see here) over and above obtaining clear occupancy inspections - even when letting a relative live on the premises for free - requires the following:

” The [Director of the Department of Public Works] may provide written notice to the owner of residential rental property licensed under this Code that an occupant thereof, within a period of one year, has been convicted of having violated a felony, misdemeanor or ordinance related to the following acts:

  a. illegal sale, manufacture, storing, possession, distribution or use of narcotics or other controlled substances or

precursors;

  b. illegal sale, manufacture, storing, possession, distribution or use of drug paraphernalia or precursors;
  c. illegal sale, storing, possession, use or distribution of a firearm, weapon or explosive device, or other

violation of law related to use or possession of the same;

  d. prostitution;
  e. illegal gambling;
  f. illegal sale, distribution and consumption of alcoholic beverages.

Within 30 days of receipt of such notice from the Director, the owner shall initiate eviction proceedings against such occupant or occupants, and shall thereafter diligently pursue them… An owner who fails to begin eviction proceedings with regard to such occupant or occupants within 30 days of receipt of the Director’s notice, or who fails diligently to pursue such eviction proceedings, shall be subject to license suspension.

And here are the penalties the bill would levy on a landlord for not evicting a tenant who, for example, had been convicted in the past year of violating the county ordinance prohibiting consumption of alcohol in a massage parlor — or something equally innocuous:

Every person or entity convicted of a violation of any of the provisions of this chapter shall be fined not more than

One Thousand Dollars ($1,000.00) or imprisoned in the St. Louis County Jail for not more than one year, or be punished by both such fine and imprisonment.

Each day in which a person or entity allows occupancy of residential rental property in violation of any provision of this chapter shall constitute a separate violation.”

Ellen Sauerbrey