The Chappaqua Case --- The Feds Muscle In on Local Zoning Laws

From National Review:

Here’s a question for Hillary Clinton: Should a U.S. attorney threaten a county with more than $1 million in fines if it refuses to pressure local officials to approve a housing development?

The issue is not at all hypothetical. It’s front and center right now in Westchester County, N.Y. – and the housing development in question would be built in Chappaqua, the hamlet where Hillary and Bill Clinton live. And it’s of much more than local interest. The action threatened against Westchester officials may presage a similar approach by HUD against the 1,200-plus governments across the country that accept federal community-development funds. Indeed, HUD has announced that it plans to adopt its new interpretation of “fair housing” nationwide.
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It’s all the result of a lawsuit filed in 2006 by a New York City–based nonprofit called the Anti-Discrimination Center. The suit argued that when Westchester County applied for federal community-development block-grant funds for, among other things, affordable housing, it failed to identify possible racial as well as income-related barriers faced by poorer residents seeking better housing, and failed to take steps to counter those barriers. Note that the county was never found guilty of actual discrimination of any kind. Nonetheless, a federal judge agreed with the plaintiffs that the county had misrepresented its fair-housing enforcement efforts.

The settlement was far more than a technical one. To resolve the suit, Westchester pledged to use $50 million of its own funds, along with HUD money it receives, to build some 750 units of new subsidized housing — including 630 units in some of its wealthiest enclaves, where less than 3 percent of the population is black and less than 7 percent Hispanic — and to market them especially to those groups. HUD joined the suit to monitor enforcement of the settlement.
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But here’s the rub. Twenty-eight of those units are in a proposed development near the commuter rail station in the Clintons’ hamlet of Chappaqua — which (in the complex system of local governance used in New York State) is part of the Town of New Castle (also home to New York governor and former HUD secretary Andrew Cuomo). The Chappaqua Station project has already been promised funding by Westchester County — but, under pressure from Chappaqua residents, New Castle has not approved the required zoning variances. Ironically, there appears to be little overt local opposition to the idea of a subsidized housing project in a town where median income is $180,000 a year. Instead, what many local residents appear to be concerned about is the quality of the new housing from the point of view of its intended residents. That is, they fear that the site would be just a new version of the other side of the tracks — a less than desirable place to live to which the poor are shunted. In other words, opposition comes in part from liberals and involves the very local question of the best location for the new development.
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But bludgeoning local government to achieve them is a recipe for controversy, lawsuits, and racial tension, not tolerance. The question of what the federal role should be is one about which Hillary Clinton must be asked in the course of her campaign.

The though of a bunch of low income housing near the Clinton's Chappaqua mansion is so filled with irony and schadenfreude.