Category Archives: Miscellaneous

AFFH Act in Under Six Minutes

Watch this excellent 6-minute video from John Anthony for a quick explanation of what the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Act means for YOUR Town or City.

If the above video does not appear on your device, use this direct link:
https://youtu.be/qvnDoK-j_UA

Straight Talk About Planning

If the above video does not appear on your device, use this direct link:
https://youtu.be/Rm-XusgA_CA

Question: “Since our community does not directly receive HUD grant money, are we still subject to meet the new Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing obligations?”

Short version is, yes.

A subrecipient is any jurisdiction that receives grant money from a direct grantee. If a county or state receives a HUD Community Development Block Grant and disburses part of the funds to a city or county, that jurisdiction is a subrecipient.

According to The Department of Housing and Urban Development Fact Sheet, in referencing HUD CDBG funds, “Recipients must ensure full compliance with these federal laws and must also ensure compliance by all sub-recipients to whom funds are distributed.”

The civil rights law firm of Allen Relman Dane and Colfax states it succinctly: “You (the grantee) can’t fund jurisdictions whose policies and practices are AFFH non-compliant.”

If your community received HUD funds from your state, it is their responsibility to assure that your jurisdiction meets its AFFH obligations. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, “States must assure that units of local government receiving CDBG or HOME funds comply. States and local governments must certify that they are affirmatively furthering fair housing in their Consolidated Plans (ConPlans) and Public Housing Agency Plans (PHA Plans).”

Here is another critical point. Your community’s AFFH obligation does not end with the HUD funds you receive.

As stated in HUD’s regulation (p14), AFFH governs…
– Community Development Block Grants (CDBG)
– Home Investment Partnerships (HOME)
– Emergency Solutions Grants (ESG)
– Housing Opportunities for Persons with Aids (HOPWA)

However, this is only the beginning of the recipients’ obligations to AFFH. According to HUD’s Fair Housing Planning Guide, your planning goals “will be accomplished primarily by making investments with federal and other resources.”

For example, if your community accepted CDBG funds to improve water and sewer lines that effect protected classes, fair housing or urban development, your AFFH obligations extend beyond the grant money.

Again, Allen, Relman, Dane and Colfax clarifies…
“Although the grantee’s AFFH obligation arises in connection with the receipt of Federal funding, its AFFH obligation is not restricted to the design and operation of HUD-funded programs at the State or local level. The AFFH obligation extends to all housing and housing-related activities in the grantee’s jurisdictional area whether publicly or privately funded.”

Question: “Our local Public Housing Authority (PHA) received HUD grants and our town appointed the PHA’s board members. Is our community required to collaborate with the PHA and meet the AFFH obligations under their grant?”

Short answer, not exactly.
HUD agrees that collaboration between the local jurisdiction and the PHA would be helpful and “encourages the creation of MOU’s (memorandum of understanding) to govern the joint participation process when completing the Assessment of Fair Housing.”

However, in the Federal Register, (p 42322 Sec. 18) HUD “declines to require such entities to execute a letter or agreement affirming cooperation…”

The Paris Climate Agreement Is a Treaty

The Paris Climate Agreement Is a Treaty Requiring Senate Review
Why and How Congress Should Fight President Obama’s Power Grab

To safeguard America’s economic future and capacity for self-government, congressional leaders must expose Obama’s climate diplomacy as an attempted end-run around the Constitution’s treaty-making process. They should do so before the President signs the Agreement on Earth Day, April 22, at a United Nations ceremony in New York.

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Obama’s Land Grabs by Executive Order

In a move that has environmental militants exulting and western farmers, ranchers, and property owners fuming, President Obama has locked up 1.8 million acres by executive fiat, with the stroke of a pen. Millions more acres are planned to follow, part of the Obama administration’s boast to use “audacious executive actions” — read unconstitutional usurpations — to advance his radical “transformative” agenda during his last months in office.

While in California on a fundraising expedition, President Obama took time on February 12 to sign an executive order proclaiming three new national monuments, imposing the strictest of federal restrictions on 1.8 million acres of the Golden State. The three new illegally created monuments are Mojave Trails National Monument (1.6 million acres), the Sand to Snow National Monument (154,000 acres), and the Castle Mountains National Monument (21,000 acres).

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Obama Ignores Supreme Court, Will Sign Climate Agreement

Ignoring the ruling that should have stopped him, Obama will sign the Paris climate pact, which puts the United States further under the thumb of world government. Along with world government comes more taxation, more restrictions, more redistribution of the wealth overseas, and less adherence to the constitution.

“The Obama administration will officially sign last year’s international climate change pact despite its central policy being put on ice by the Supreme Court.

Todd Stern, the State Department’s top climate diplomat and negotiator for last year’s agreement in Paris, said Tuesday that the Supreme Court’s order to delay the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan — called a “stay” in legal terminology— doesn’t change the administration’s plans.

“It is entirely premature, really premature to assume the Clean Power Plan will be struck down but, even if it were, come what may, we are sticking to our plan to sign, to join,” Stern told reporters in Brussels after he met with the European Union’s top climate official, according to Reuters.

“We’re going to go ahead and sign the agreement this year,” he said.

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 last week to put the climate change rule for power plants on hold while 26 states and various energy interests fight it in federal court.”

Need any more proof that our government is the outlaw?

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The fact that Obama can get away with this without risking harm to one hair on his head, is proof that the criminals are indeed in charge.

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The Takeover of Local Government

From John Anthony at Sustainable Freedom Lab: The destruction of our economy… the destruction of our health care system… guns confiscated… borders wide open… destruction of property rights… privacy rights… the UN’s new Agenda 2030… HUD’s oppressive Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) Rule… and so much more, is happening and very fast.

Do you know what these are and how to stop them? Most Americans have no idea what they are actually fighting.  Worse – they don’t know that most of these battles will be won or lost on the LOCAL level – not in Congress!

AFFH is a decades old term that HUD just translated into a package of mandates governing how communities must use new grant money.   Acceptance of funds through familiar programs such as CDBGs, suddenly triggers the revised AFFH “obligation.” This chilling tactic allows HUD to take control of local zoning, reverse voters’ decisions and even annex your hometown into a region.

Recently, HUD forced the citizens of Rockford, IL, to abandon their vote to build 49 affordable housing units and instead accept 69 units.  Neither the mayor, the council nor the community wanted the larger number of homes.  It didn’t matter. HUD struck like a sledgehammer.   They threatened to notify the Department of Justice of possible civil rights violations and failure to affirmatively further fair housing.  The community had no choice but to buckle.

Worse, once a community accepts HUD funds, AFFH rules govern any money’s they receive, public or private, that HUD concludes may affect fair housing or urban development. 

People are fighting back.  The communities of Castle Rock, CO, Goffstown and Rindge NH, and Westchester County, NY have already rejected HUD grants issued under the new AFFH rule.

According to Tom DeWeese of American Policy Center, international policy is currently directing local communities to enforce cutbacks on water use by as much as 75%.

The Sierra Club’s plan forces 500 families to live on one acre of land and they deem it “Smart Growth.” The new corporate law called “Benefit Corporations” enlists corporations to enforce sustainable development policies in their products and promotions. Nearly every state has now either passed or is considering this legislation.

Rochester NH is about to be ‘urbanized’ under a CDBG.

Silvio Conte Encroaches NH, More Land Grabs Coming

Well, here we go again, by executive order?

Washington Times – Another National Monument by Obama’s Executive Order

Three New Monuments

You decide. What will be next the BLM? That is already happening in Texas.

The land grab frenzy has begun.

Wow, what will be next. Oh, could it be US Fish and Wildlife in New Hampshire and every state in New England?

Silvio Conte: http://www.fws.gov/refuge/Silvio_O_Conte/what_we_do/draftccp.html

Great Thicket: http://www.fws.gov/northeast/refuges/planning/lpp/pdf/13w_LPP_Entire_Document_8256KB.pdf

Umbagog: http://www.granitestatefutures.org/news/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/UMBAGOG_CCP-EIS_SUMMARY.pdf

All Hail to the Unelected!

The UN has no right, and the TPP has taken more of our sovereignty.

TN Note: The U.N’s goal to convert the global economy to Sustainable Development from Capitalism and Free Enterprise is completely shared with the global elite, and hence, with the trade agreements that they control. Thus, using the TPP and TTIP Agreements to harmonize trade regulations throughout the world in order to complete the work that the U.N. started should be fully expected.

Major deals between developed and developing economies are not commonplace: On September 25, the 193 members of the United Nations announced a new global action plan for achieving Sustainable Development Goals including no poverty in any form by 2030. A week later, the Transpacific Trade Partnership, or TPP, concluded negotiations that form the largest regional trade agreement in history, one representing nearly 40 percent of global GDP.

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