A divisive issue has arisen in Hillary Clinton’s tony adopted hometown of Chappaqua (population 1,400), in New York’s Westchester County: affordable housing—specifically, whether to permit the construction of subsidized apartments for low-income families near the train station. In 2009, the county reached a settlement with the federal government of a lawsuit alleging that it had failed to remove racial and income-related barriers for poor residents seeking better housing—in effect, that it had discriminated. Since then, HUD has doggedly pushed Westchester, including its wealthy localities, to finance hundreds of new units of subsidized housing and to market them aggressively, particularly to minorities.
What’s at stake goes beyond Westchester County. Through its expansive “fair housing” policies, the Obama administration wants to ensure that poor minorities, who have historically clustered in low-income urban neighborhoods, can avail themselves of the better schools and greater safety of high-income suburban locales. As HUD puts it: “No child’s ZIP code should determine her opportunity to achieve.” Support for “deconcentrating poverty”—that is, reducing the percentage of poor people within specific localities by relocating them elsewhere—has gained additional momentum from a recent Supreme Court decision and new social-science research.
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