Democrats’ War on Small-Town Values, Single-Family Housing & Property Values

Across the fruited plains, Democrats are waging war to crush a lifestyle they abhor. Call it small-town & suburban America: single-family neighborhoods, quiet streets, little or no crime, town centers stamped with their own historic character, and almost no signs of the vagrancy and homeless encampments that plague Democrat-run cities. Democrats want you to have none of this. If you’ve worked for years to save up for a home in one of these havens, forget about it. I have written about two of Democrats’ schemes to destroy middle class housing. Check the links below.

Since the Obama Administration, the Democrat Party has been using brute legal force to remake towns using a cookie-cutter formula that forces each to have the same proportion of houses and apartments, the same mix of low, middle, and upper-income residents, and the same reliance on public transit, all controlled by Blue State politicians. Any town that resists gets shamed as “segregated” or “racist” though this isn’t about race.

GOVERNOR SHOCKED LEGISLATORS

Recently, the Connecticut legislature passed a bill, House Bill 5002, which should be called the Destroy Connecticut Towns Act. After weeks of hedging, Democrat Governor Ned Lamont last week vetoed the bill, which was the most significant piece of housing legislation to cross his desk since he became governor in 2019.

The bill dictates how many low-income and moderate-income apartments each Connecticut town must provide, and mandates that towns also foot the bill for the schools, parks, public transportation, and other services low-income residents will need. Local taxes will soar.

The bill explicitly says its purpose is to ensure “economic diversity” in each town. This is about social engineering, not remedying housing shortages. Democrat Bob Duff, the state senate majority leader, says, “It’s extremely important…that we don’t segregate people based on a ZIP code.” Everyone, regardless of income, should have the opportunity to choose to live in any town.

Connecticut lawmakers are nixing local rule. Ordinances that protect the appearance of a town have to be overruled. The bill states that multifamily buildings of up to 24 units will no longer have to provide off-street parking, making it inconvenient or impossible to own a car. Envision cars lining every residential street, until some bossy bureaucrat outlaws street parking.

Democrats never give up in their journey to harm Americans. The lawmakers are reworking some of the bill’s provisions in hopes with obtaining the governor’s signature.

INVITING BUMS TO TAKE OVER PARKS

Towns will also be forced to welcome vagrants who want to sleep in parks and public lots, which my former Portland suburb did in 2023. The bill outlaws “hostile architecture,” meaning park benches with armrests and divided seating, or stone walls with spikes on top that deter sleeping in the rough. [Ha! Don’t you hate the way lunatics on The Left invent words in order to push their destructive agenda?] Instead, the bill launches a program of mobile showers and mobile laundry services on trucks, paid for my TAXPAYERS, to serve the homeless wherever they choose to live, thus turning “parkside” living into a cesspool of crime and filth. Living across the street from a beautiful park used to be a plus.

How can kids walk around town with their pals if there are homeless encampments? Judge Glock, director of research at the Manhattan Institute think tank, points out that the homeless amount to 1% of the population in Los Angeles but commit 25% of the homicides. Inviting the homeless means inviting crime and drugs. Californicating the small towns of Connecticut by encouraging public camping and vagrancy “is frightening,” says Glock.

DEMOCRATS’ SCHEMES SPREAD FROM BLUE STATE TO BLUE STATE

New York Democrats are also taking aim at small-town living. A bill sponsored by state Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal would outlaw local towns from setting minimum lot sizes over one-eighth of an acre near the town center and a half-acre everywhere else. Postage stamp sizes. Riverhead, NY, Town Supervisor Tim Hubbard is vowing to sue. “We’re trying to keep our community as rural as it can be . . . We don’t think the state should be zoning our town.”

Hoylman-Sigal lives on the west side of Manhattan, so who the hell is he to impose a population-dense lifestyle on small-town New Yorkers? Similarly, in New Jersey, Democrat Governor Phil Murphy is pushing lawmakers to override local ordinances and impose the same kinds of “reforms” as those in the Connecticut bill. Remember, when Murphy locked down New Jersey during Covid? He claimed the Bill of Rights, which gives NJ residents rights, was “above his pay grade.”

In all these states and across the country, small-town Americans need to fight back. There is no constitutional right to live in a solid middle class town or suburb with single-family homes and leafy, quiet streets. It’s something you earn. Once you’ve purchased a home, you have the right to protect its value.

It’s time to put Blue State politicians on notice that their battle to destroy our suburbs and small towns will be resisted at the voting booth and in court.

Thank you to Betsy McCaughey, former Lt. Governor of New York State and founder of SaveOurCity for providing most of this research.