Foes point to Westchester County, N.Y., as an example of how HUD seeks to control suburban zoning and building. HUD has withheld $17 million in funds from the tony community after it failed to build several hundred affordable-housing units under federal order.

Single-Family Zoning = Bias?

"HUD has said that even quarter-acre (lot) single-family zoning, in their view, may very well be discriminatory and perpetuate 'segregation,'" Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino told IBD. "This is about changing every block, every neighborhood to the viewpoint of federal bureaucrats."

HUD plans to release "geospatial" data of every U.S. neighborhood to show racial bias patterns.

HUD says localities can "overcome" such patterns in "low-minority areas" by, among other things, "amending a local land use or zoning law to remove barriers to the development of affordable housing in areas of opportunity," where jobs, quality schools, parks and grocery stores are more plentiful.

They can also satisfy regulators by expanding Section 8 subsidized housing in those areas.

Section 8 Concerns

In fact, HUD in its rule suggests that local housing authorities augment rental vouchers to cover higher rents in wealthy suburbs and give poor minorities a list of landlords willing to lease units, along with relocation counselors.

The agency also urges housing authorities to "take regional approaches to HCV (Housing Choice Vouchers) mobility practices," including forming regional consortia to coordinate Section 8 relocations.

But even HUD-sponsored studies have found a link between Section 8 tenants and higher crime. The Urban Institute found in a 2012 study that tenants who moved in the last decade from inner-city public housing to Section 8 rentals in Atlanta and Chicago suburbs tended to bring crime with them.

"Destination neighborhoods would have been 2.8% and 5.5% lower, respectively, for violent crime in Atlanta and Chicago" without relocated Section 8 households, the study found.

White suburbanites are not the only ones upset. Middle-class African-Americans in Chatham, Ill., for example, have complained that violent crime has moved in with tenants from Chicago projects. Black professionals there say they now hear frequent gunfire, and blame Section 8 renters involved in drugs and gangs for increased violence.

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Having spent years perfecting the art of inciting race warfare, Barack Obama and his administration released new housing rules that will define, qualify and categorize every community across the country by race, with the aim of forcing every neighborhood to comply with government race quotas.

It sounds ominous because it is. But it’s hardly surprising from the narcissist who pledged to “fundamentally transform” America.

Under the new Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule (AFFH), announced by Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Julian Castro this week, the federal government will amass and centralize nationwide public data on communities, including “patterns of integration and segregation, racially and ethically concentrated areas of poverty, disproportionate housing needs, and disparities in access to opportunity.” Big Brother doesn’t just want to look over your shoulder; he wants to move into your home.

HUD claims the rule will “equip communities that receive HUD funding with the data and tools that will help them to meet long-standing fair housing obligations.” In truth, however, AFFH is a stealth move to socially engineer every street in America and to force compliance with what Obama thinks communities should look like — namely, more “affordable” housing in affluent neighborhoods.

But as political analyst Marc Thiessen noted, “[W]e believe in diversifying communities, too, as conservatives. The way you do that is through economic opportunity. … It’s not by building more affordable housing in the affluent communities. It’s by helping more Americans afford housing in affluent communities. And right now the problem is that people at the bottom of the Obama economy can’t get ahead.”

Still, Washington wants to take over local zoning authority to impose racial quotas on communities. And as Ethics and Public Policy Center Senior Fellow Stanley Kurtz warns, “Once HUD gets its hooks into a municipality, no policy area is safe. Zoning, transportation, education, all of it risks slipping into the control of the federal government and the new, unelected regional bodies the feds will empower.”

Nevertheless, Liberty aside, The Washington Post’s Emily Badger heralded the new rules as a way to “repair the [Fair Housing Act’s] unfulfilled promise and promote the kind of racially integrated neighborhoods that have long eluded deeply segregated cities like Chicago and Baltimore.” Funny she mentions those particular cities. While she points to Chicago’s “decades” of segregation as evidence that AFFH is needed, Badger fails to note those same decades were spent under solely Democrat leadership. Similarly, Baltimore has been led by the Left since Lyndon Johnson was president. Coincidence? We think not.

Also not coincidental is the way the government and media have remained largely mum on what the administration’s real plan is. Kurtz notes, “Obama has downplayed his policy goals in this area and delayed the finalization of AFFH for years, because he understands how politically explosive this rule is. Once the true implications of AFFH are understood, Americans will rebel.”

And rebel they should. As if Washington putting on a lab coat and stethoscope weren’t bad enough, now Obama wants to become zoning authority, landlord, realtor and public transportation chief combined. He’s is leaving no racist rock unturned in his quest to undermine Liberty.

Making matters worse, the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in the Texas Fair Housing case — in which a liberal majority said groups claiming housing discrimination no longer need to prove their case on the merits but only to claim “intent” to discriminate — means the real implications of AFFH will be a racially charged free-for all, with no gray areas and everything defined in black and white (pun intended).

Forget Martin Luther King’s noble notion of judging people by the content of their character. Obama wants to judge entire neighborhoods by the speciously calculated color of their skin. This is not the way of Liberty or of opportunity; it’s another giant leap down the road to statism, and it has no place in a nation that promises equal opportunity, not equal results, for all.