Landing the Big One

Landing the Big One

Wednesday, July 01, 2015

Federal Housing Policy "Making America Look Like America" - in a demographic way

The residents of Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota should see some changes if the federal government effort on Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing gets really serious.

Based on census data the percentage of Black or African American persons in the U.S. as a whole is about 13%. However, in Wyoming it is only 1.7%, in Montana .6%, and in North Dakota 1.8%.

Clearly these states, among others, are not doing their fair share in
improving integrated living patterns and overcoming historic patterns of segregation; reducing racial and ethnic concentrations of poverty; reducing disparities by race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, or disability in access to community assets such as education, transit access, and employment, as well as exposure to environmental health hazards and other stressors that harm a person’s quality of life; and responding to disproportionate housing needs by protected class.

Other states, like Mississippi, successfully have attracted larger shares of African American or Black population (Mississippi leads at 37%) than other states, which gives states like Mississippi a huge advantage in establishing integrated living patterns, etc - at least as far as one part of a protected class goes. I mean, poor Montana doesn't have enough protected class representatives to do any of the things suggested by HUD in the above-quoted paragraph.

Obviously, what is needed for every state with a Black/African American population above 13% to encourage out-migration to states that fall below that number. According to the chart found here, and state below that 13% need to encourage immigration.


Percentage of population self-reported as African-American by state in 2010:    less than 2 %    2–5 %    5–10 %    10–15 %    15–20 %    20–25 %    25–30 %    30–35 %    35–40 %

By my reading of the chart, only 16 states are above 13% in this population group and 34 are below. So those states that need to get busy are:
Rank Black/AfAm pop %of total pop
17 Ohio 1,407,681 12.04%
18 Texas 2,979,598 11.91%
19 Missouri 704,043 11.49%
20 Pennsylvania 1,377,689 10.79%
21 Connecticut 362,296 10.34%
22 Indiana 591,397 9.07%
23 Nevada 218,626 8.10%
24 Oklahoma 277,644 7.96%
25 Kentucky 337,520 7.71%
26 Massachusetts 434,398 7.02%
27 California 2,299,072 6.67%
28 Rhode Island 60,189 6.36%
29 Kansas 167,864 6.15%
30 Wisconsin 359,148 6.07%
31 Minnesota 274,412 4.57%
32 Nebraska 82,885 4.50%
33 Colorado 201,737 4.28%
34 Alaska 23,263 4.27%
35 Arizona 259,008 4.16%
36 Washington 240,042 3.74%
37 West Virginia 63,124 3.58%
38 Hawaii 21,424 3.08%
39 New Mexico 42,550 2.97%
40 Iowa 89,148 2.68%
41 Oregon 69,206 2.01%
42 Wyoming 4,748 1.29%
43 Utah 29,287 1.27%
44 New Hampshire 15,035 1.22%
45 South Dakota 10,207 1.14%
46 North Dakota 7,960 1.08%
47 Maine 15,707 1.03%
48 Idaho 9,810 0.95%
49 Vermont 6,277 0.87%
50 Montana 4,027 0.67%

States needing to encourage out-migration for "furthering fair housing" purposes:
1 Mississippi 1,074,200 37.30%
2 Louisiana 1,452,396 31.98%
3 Georgia 3,150,435 31.4%
4 Maryland 1,700,298 29.44%
5 South Carolina 1,290,684 28.48%
6 Alabama 1,251,311 26.38%
7 North Carolina 2,048,628 21.60%
8 Delaware 191,814 20.95%
9 Virginia 1,551,399 19.91%
10 Tennessee 1,055,689 16.78%
11 Florida 2,999,862 15.91%
12 Arkansas 449,895 15.76%
13 New York 3,073,800 15.18%
14 Illinois 1,866,414 14.88%
15 New Jersey 1,204,826 14.46%
16 Michigan 1,400,362 14.24%

Won't it be better when we're all equal? It could be just like  the way universities work admission numbers to make sure all students benefit from exposure to peoples of different races, creeds, etc.

In case you are wondering, I am not trying to single a group out except as already done by the U.S. Census Bureau because I figure HUD is doing exactly the same thing.

It is clear that we will need to move Hispanic/Latino populations around too, so that each state has its 17% that represents that groups percentage of U.S. total population. New Mexico, Arizona, Florida, and California are clearly states that need to encourage out-migration of Hispanic/Latinos and Maine, Kentucky, Ohio, and New Hampshire to pick up their recruiting efforts. See here.

We also have work to do with Asians, since they are over-represented in California, the Northeast and major urban areas.

While the statistics for LGBT are mostly estimates, it appears (see here) that Washington, DC needs to move some LGBT persons out so as to provide more opportunities for the rest of the country to get even (DC at 10%, almost everywhere else is about 4%).

Demographically speaking, of course.

Of course, there is always the problem of clearly identifying who is what. Does my grandchild, who is half Filipino and half Caucasian, count as Asian or as White (non-Hispanic)? Can a person self-identify? Are we back to the "one drop of blood" standard? It's all so confusing.

Who decides? What happens if people refuse to immigrate/emigrate to/from the appropriate state? Can or will HUD force migrations? Will they punish Wyoming if it fails to meet some quota set in Washington, D.C. to attract more Asians? Will they punish Mississippi if it fails to lower its African-American/Black population percentage? Is federal funding for New Hampshire in danger? Will they learn lessons from the Chinese Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution or the Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge? You know, pursuing goals that view citizens merely as numbers and not as individual human beings.

I mean, this stuff from the HUD sounds ominous:
Local governments and States that receive Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), HOME Investment Partnerships (HOME), Emergency Solutions Grants (ESG), and Housing Opportunities for Persons With AIDS (HOPWA), as well as public housing agencies (PHAs) are required to affirmatively further the purposes of the Fair Housing Act. To better facilitate this obligation, as well as address issues raised by the Government Accountability Office, HUD proposes an improved structure and process whereby HUD would provide these program participants with guidance, data, and an assessment template from which they would complete an assessment of fair housing (the AFH). This assessment would then linkvto Consolidated Plans, PHA Plans, and Capital Fund Plans, meaningfully informing resulting investments and related policies to affirmatively further fair housing.
Wait, you think some people might object to being forced to move to Wyoming to meet a HUD goal? Huh.

UPDATE: Of course, right after I posted this, it occurred to me that I had left out the discussion of how encouraging the movement of "white (non-Hispanic)" persons from states with low protected class representation could also achieve the goals of making the numbers work, too. So, for example, encouraging white New Hampshire residents to move to Mississippi would both raise the % of protected class groups in NH and lower the % of protected class groups in Mississippi.

See, it's really easy. I should go into government planning.

4 comments:

  1. Please tell me this is from the Onion--or Duffleblog. Please....

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous7:37 PM

    Yep, this goes right along with the increasing rise of the police state in this country which used to be ours.
    I had an encounter with on of West Linn, OR's "finest" today. Monday I shall file a formal complaint and we'll see how that works out.

    Paul L. Quandt

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous1:42 PM

      Ok, so you just took a long time to approve it.

      Paul

      Delete
  3. Anonymous12:45 PM

    I'm guessing that you didn't like my previous comment.

    Paul L. Quandt

    ReplyDelete