P&Z members come out swinging against Fair Housing rules

WINSTED —  At their regular meeting on Monday, July 13, members of the Planning and Zoning Commission issued complaints and concerns about the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule.

According to a press release from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that was published on www.hudexchange.info, the department established the rule earlier this month in order to strengthen the Fair Housing Act, which is part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

The Fair Housing Act protects people from discrimination when they rent or buy housing or when they try to secure financing for housing.

The original act prohibits discrimination due to race, color, religion, sexuality, national origin or disability.

According to HUD, the new AFFH rule will set out “a framework for local governments, states and public housing agencies to take meaningful actions to overcome historic patterns of segregation, promote fair housing choice and foster inclusive communities that are free from discrimination.”

“The rule is designed to help program participants better understand what they are required to do to meet their AFFH duties and enables them to assess fair housing issues in their communities and then to make informed policy decisions,” the press release issued by HUD states. “For purposes of the rule, affirmatively furthering fair housing means taking meaningful actions, in addition to combating discrimination, that overcome patterns of segregation and foster inclusive communities free from barriers that restrict access to opportunity based on protected characteristics. 

“For purposes of the rule, meaningful actions means significant actions that are designed and can be reasonably expected to achieve a material positive change that affirmatively furthers fair housing by, for example, increasing fair housing choice or decreasing disparities in access to opportunity.”

Under the rule, HUD will provide communities an Assessment of Fair Housing (AFH) Assessment Tool which will  identify fair housing issues “pertaining to patterns of integration and segregation; racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty, disparities in access to opportunity and disproportionate housing needs, as well as the contributing factors for those issues.”

At the Planning and Zoning Commission’s meeting on July 13, which Town Manager Dale Martin also attended, none of the members spoke about if and when the town would have to complete the AFH Assessment Tool.

However, commission member Jerry Martinez, who is also the chairman of the Winchester Republican Town Committee, criticized the AFFH.

“The [AFFH] basically legalizes the forced relocation of people of one neighborhood to another,” Martinez said. “The ruling, which follows a recent Supreme Court decision, grants the legality and permission to rewrite neighborhood space based on racial quotas and not economics. The AFFH has the same principles that forced the bussing of inner city students from urban to suburban areas, from poor to rich areas. Now under the guise of affordable housing the department will  relocate economically challenged urban residents to towns like Winchester.”

Martinez said the AFFH will give the federal government unrestricted power “to determine the social makeup of neighborhoods and towns, like the Highland Lake district.

“It will put more people in the neighborhood and make it densely populated,” Martinez said. “The result of such action will affect transportation and business development, while at the same time eliminating local control over core responsibilities, from zoning, transportation and education. 

“The purpose of the new rule is to undo the town of Winchester’s system of local government and replace it with a regional alternative that turns suburbs into a helpless satellite of inner cities like Hartford. Ultimately, the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission will be powerless, just as much as the soon to be powerless Board of Education. 

“Even worse, the citizens of Winchester will lose their cherished town meeting form of government and become puppets to an ever increasing powerful federal government pulling our strings.”

“It has been talked about as being a new mandate that Jerry just summarized,” Martin said. “They are basically saying that [the federal government is] trying to socially engineer the racial, ethnic and economic.”

“So you will have no control over this,” Martinez added. “They will put in dense housing where inner city people deserve to live there just as much as you do.”

“Who will pay for the housing?” commission member Art Melycher asked.

“We will,” Martinez said. “Across the country we will have a person embedded in each town to oversee just like the election commission.”

“To not have any rights ourselves,” commission member Barbara Wilkes said. “It’s communism.”

“You will have rights, but they are all going to come from the government,” Martinez said. “Call it whatever you want.”

“Communists,” board chairman Craig Sanden said.

“It’s bureaucrats from afar that are making these decisions,” Martin said.

The commission directed Martin to write a letter to state legislative representatives disapproving of the AFFH.