From Air Force One on his way to a high-dollar Texas fundraiser President Donald Trump Wednesday afternoon tweeted lies about Americans who live in affordable housing. Contrary to numerous studies, including those from the Dept. of Health and Human Services, Trump is falsely claiming “low income” housing causes housing prices to drop and crime to increase.
“I am 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,” Trump tweeted.
“Your housing prices will go up based on the market, and crime will go down. I have rescinded the Obama-Biden AFFH Rule. Enjoy!” he added.
The nation is in great need of much more affordable housing, especially as Americans are being evicted at increasing rates during the coronavirus pandemic.
On Tuesday night Trump held a “tele-rally” with Iowa voters, during which he shared a similar message, although even more racist than the one he just tweeted.
Trump declared Democrats “don’t mind if low-income housing is built in a neighborhood, in a beautiful suburb of Iowa, but a beautiful suburb anywhere in the country. They want low – and this has been going on for years, Obama made it much worse, and now they want Cory Booker to run that program, Cory Booker of New Jersey, to run that program and make it many times worse than it is right now.”
Senator Booker has nothing to do with affordable housing.
Trump had been trying to court Black voters but after he fired Brad Parscale and installed Bill Stepien as his new campaign manager the plan now appears to try to appeal to white suburban women, who has left him in droves.
Trump in fact did roll back an Obama-era fair housing rule last week – a rule he’s never enforced.
“In a move squarely aimed at courting white conservative suburban voters,” ABC News reported, “the Trump administration on Thursday officially dismantled an Obama-era rule that sought to lessen the impact of decades of racial segregation in America’s neighborhoods.”
As NCRM reported overnight, Vox examined a 2016 study that found “adding low-income housing to poor neighborhoods lowers crime and boosts property values.”
The Dept. of Health and Human Services found that the opening of an affordable housing development in Mount Laurel, NJ, “was not associated with trends in crime, property values, or taxes, and discuss management practices and design features that may have mitigated potential negative externalities.”