Beware what you wish for with fair housing law

The July 26 Daily Herald opinion raised my awareness to a serious suburban cities' self-determination threat.

What's shaping up is a very important governing crossroads regarding the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule associated with the 1968 Fair Housing Act. Per the Daily Herald editorial, "The Trump Administration has effectively suspended the Obama fair housing mandate that tied community development grants to efforts to integrate neighborhoods in keeping with the 1968 Fair Housing Grant. (Joe) Biden's plan would not only re-start that mandate, but would strengthen the enforcement mechanisms by withholding transportation money from communities that fail to revise zoning codes enough to provide for sufficient and fairer housing."

I interpret "withholding transportation money…" to mean withholding money to maintain and expand federal and state roads and highways within Arlington Heights. It seems that saying no to federal/state transportation money would place a very heavy tax burden on Arlington Heights residents. And saying yes to the transportation money would require Arlington Heights planners to "revise zoning codes enough to provide for sufficient and fairer housing". A yes could replace Arlington Heights' local planning self-determination by centralized "fair" edicts from Washington, D.C. Questions like; What is "enough" when revising zoning codes?" How much is "sufficient fairer" housing? Just ask the residents and governments of Westchester County, New York …. bamboozled into costly, unwanted federal government fair housing "planning" under the Obama Administration.

Bob Galvanoni

Arlington Heights