Social Justice, Destruction of Property Rights, and Government Tyranny (Part One)

You are a poor minority living in a government housing project called “Affordable.” It’s all paid for by the tax dollars of mostly middle-income Americans.

by Tom DeWeese

You are a poor minority living in a government housing project called “Affordable.” It’s all paid for by the tax dollars of mostly middle-income Americans. Included are still more government programs that are providing monthly checks and coupons to supply food, free healthcare, free education, and let’s also throw in free cell phones.

Does that not make us a generous nation? Are not the poor well cared for and satisfied? Aren’t the taxpayers proud of their contribution to the common good? The answer to every one of these questions is NO!

First, consider these facts about that stipend income from the welfare check. Originally, it was called “assistance” and the purpose was to help out when the paycheck wasn’t quite covering needs during difficult times. Over time the system changed from “assistance” to “Government Benefit.” Now it’s an entire system of total dependence. While promises to help provide job training and even some actual jobs exist, few actually provide enough income or security to allow recipients to leave the program. In addition, if a recipient even tries to put some of that money away in savings, as an attempt to provide for an emergency, it is confiscated and possibly the welfare check stops all together. It’s no longer “assistance” during hard times. Now it’s control.

Then there is that public housing situation. Here’s what it’s like to actually live in those government projects. In many cities the neighborhoods are drastically run-down and in disrepair as lights, air conditioning, and appliances fail to work. The roof leaks, windows are broken, and the plumbing backs up. Trash around the grounds is in ever-growing piles, and is rarely, if ever cleaned and hauled away. Don’t even think about any kind of yard work to create a place for the children to play. Worse, the residents live in fear of gang elements like MS-13 that have taken over the neighborhoods to rule as their territory. Pimps, pedophiles, and drug dealers prey on the children. And no matter how many times residents may ask for repairs, it never happens.

Why are the conditions so bad in this government-controlled housing? Government is a monopoly that has no incentive to be efficient. The taxpayers are forced to pay and the money rolls in so the politicians can puff out their chests over how generous THEY are in helping the less fortunate. Meanwhile, the management of these properties is overseen by government bureaucrats with no personal stake in the projects. Their paychecks keep rolling in, no matter what happens to the properties they manage.

In such an atmosphere, the inherent hopelessness leaves little room for making future goals for their lives. There is rarely a way out once the system has a hold on you. By herding minorities and low-income families like cattle into these tenements, the government is committing them to a future worse than poverty. They have lost their rights, their choices, and their ability to excel through self-determination and personal growth.

Yet, proponents of government’s fair housing want you to think that those favoring the programs are the compassionate ones, helping minorities to survive in an oppressive capitalist world of the rich. Essentially fear is the common tactic used to keep minorities under government control. Anyone who opposes the system and promotes sound economics and a system of equal opportunity, is accused of heartlessness and racism, determined to pull the plug on the welfare lifeline.

To promote the fear and division, politicians, the news media, and the public education system continually drive home the message that our nation’s founders created an oppressive society in which whites get all the goodies and minorities are deliberately oppressed. In addition, goes their propaganda, the free enterprise system is designed to take the money from the poor and put it in the rich man’s pocket. And so, the result is strife, jealousy, and hatred between the races. Meanwhile, the middle class actually funds most of it from their weekly paychecks, purchases, and property taxes.

The true purpose is to move forward to impose the agenda now powered by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and others driving to change our culture and system of representative government toward their goal of global governance.

This, then, is the determined mission of today’s radical leftist movement now in control of the Democrat Party They are driving to be seen as the saviors of the oppressed. Government oversight, redistribution of wealth, and social justice are the chosen tools to enforce this false equality. Yet, the only true result has been the massive growth of poverty.

Now these forces are moving to expand their tactics by pushing the failed government-housing model into your neighborhood. The new drive is to eliminate single-family home zoning protection. Our new controllers insist that such policy is really designed as a means for wealthy homeowners to “self-segregate” themselves from those they don’t want living in their neighborhoods. Specifically, they charge that private property ownership is racist. To establish true “FREEDOM” in America, they tell us we need to open these “white privilege neighborhoods” to allow federal fair housing programs, including high rise government rental units in every neighborhood. They claim single-family-home neighborhoods contribute to a growing housing shortage. So goes their argument: “We could put ten families in the area where only one now lives in those neighborhoods. It’s only fair!”

Baltimore, Maryland, became one of the first cities to feel such pressure and threats as the NAACP sued Baltimore over alleged housing segregation. The NAACP argument was that Section 8 subsidized housing programs “bunch people together, and that it only fuels more crime and other problems.” Not fair! The solution, says the NAACP, is to “integrate the poor among wealthier families.” Outrageous as it sounds, such social-justice mongers actually claim this will help increase the income opportunities for the poor when they begin to live in those affluent neighborhoods.

The pressure from these groups has resulted in Baltimore being forced to agree to spend $30 million of taxpayer dollars over the next ten years to build 1,000 low-income homes in affluent neighborhoods.

The result will be a destruction of property values and the loss of equity for the homeowners. In short, destruction of earned wealth leading to destruction of the middle class, creating even more poor. It’s a growth product. Meanwhile, massively powerful corporations like BlackRock will move into the neighborhoods and buy that property at a massively reduced cost. They will then build the apartments and public housing, earning a fortune.

In Portland, Oregon, the infamous “poster child” of federal Smart Growth development policies, the city council unanimously approved a new tax to raise $12 million per year to pay for “affordable housing.”

Said Portland Commissioner Dan Saltzman, “The lack of affordable housing is the greatest crisis facing our city right now.” Perhaps he should take a long look at the twenty-year Smart Growth history of Portland in which massive amounts of land was locked away to limit the “sprawl” of the city. This led to land shortages, which led to bans on single-family homes, which led to the need for massive high-rise apartment buildings, all of which led to higher costs and shortages of homes. Now, Portland has a “crisis” over a shortage of “affordable” housing. Their solution is another tax on construction, driving up housing costs even more.

These same attacks on private property are growing across the nation. Landlords of privately owned apartments are being labeled the new boogeymen of our day. They now must deal with more taxes, rules, regulations, and even a ban on their ability to determine if potential renters can afford to live in the building. Such policy is the destruction of private property rights, targeting an entire industry.

Of course, the government argues that denying people who can’t afford to pay the rent to live in your property is “discrimination by right-wing capitalism.” Anyone with a small amount of rational thought would logically ask how the landlord could survive and provide his property for housing if the tenant can’t pay. The only result will be fewer landlords and fewer choices for housing. Housing shortage, indeed!

All of these policies, instituted in the name of social justice and redistribution of wealth, will very quickly lead to one final solution. Private homes, privately owned rental properties, and the individual owner’s ability to prosper, will disappear. That means the rule of law is dismissed in favor of “fairness.” Social justice is purely based on redistribution of wealth. Your wealth. That’s money you worked for, saved, invested, and protected for YOUR needs; YOUR dreams; YOUR future.

Eventually — and very soon — the only source of housing will be from government. Take a good look at the destroyed neighborhoods now under government control and see your future. Property rights and personal ownership are equal opportunities for everyone to build wealth and freedom. It’s how the United States quickly became so prosperous in its beginning.

Our founding fathers fully understood that private property ownership was the vital key to freedom. They also understood that local government representation is the key to protecting liberty against a tyrannical central government that has no real stake in the lives of the citizens. Central government destroys personal choice, incentive, and the wealth created from it. It’s the reason we are now plummeting into poverty.

As our nation now moves toward the celebration of our 250th birthday, to save our Republic it’s urgent that American citizens unite to demand an answer from our locally elected representatives: Whom do you represent — the citizens who elected you, or powerful special interests armed with a destructive agenda?

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