When middle-class white people move into a poor neighborhood, liberals complain about gentrification forcing out lower-income minorities. When middle-class white people leave a neighborhood, liberals complain about “white flight.”
Forgive me, then, for not caring that President Trump just said his administration is eliminating an Obama-era rule that pushed localities to ensure that low-income housing was not just available but also near good schools, low-crime neighborhoods, grocery stores, shopping centers, and other hallmarks of suburbia.
The administration instead would steer yet more federal dollars to so-called “opportunity zones” to do the thing that Democrats are always calling for: invest in impoverished communities.
Oh, but no. Democrats suddenly don’t want that either.
In a recent interview, Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina called the opportunity zone investments “gentrification on steroids.” He attributed that description to a local newspaper in Charleston (where I grew up), but I couldn’t find it in the city’s major paper, The Post and Courier. To the contrary, the paper editorialized in favor of opportunity zones, which offer billions of tax breaks nationwide for companies that will invest in “underserved” areas.
Trump tweeted on Wednesday, no doubt with the intent of provoking critics, that he was “happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood.”
The phrase “low-income housing” is associated with “black” by liberals (even as whites make up 51% of public housing inhabitants), so they were quick as ever to call the tweets racist.
Well, that’s the game they play no matter what. And when they have absolutely no consistency in their approach to the housing debate, I can’t be bothered by it.
No one should be.
