"Earning" Your Way into Communities

A great opinion piece on the recent complaint by Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council (MMFHC) against Waukesha County.  What just as interesting, though, is the comment section of the article.  There one see the familiar statement about people having to "earn their way" into Waukesha County.

Let's be clear here;  I'm not opposed to communities with high housing price because it's such a desirable place to live. That's the market. But when communities artificially inflate housing prices by only zoning for larger lots, larger units, having all kinds of requirements in the ordinance, and basically doing their best to prevent multi-family housing, that's when I have a problem. 

Suburban communities are heavily subsidized through a variety of methods, including roads (not free), home mortgage interest deduction (which is vastly larger than rental housing assistance programs), tax breaks, etc. For suburbanites to sneer at subsidized housing or tax-credit housing is the very height of hypocrisy.

That is essentially what communities in Waukesha County (and many other places) have done for years with the intention of limiting the number of people with low income able to live in the County.  At the same time, the County has a growing number of jobs centers, with commercial, retail, industrial growth in many communities.  When communities benefit from the growth of their tax base through employment centers and high cost housing, yet at the same exclude possible costs such as services to people with disabilities, people with extremely low-income, people who are homeless, etc., that's just...selfish.  Certain populations are disproportionately low-income, such as people with disabilities or people of color, so the net effect is that of  being discriminatory, whether intentional or not.  The law doesn't just look at what the intention is, but also what the effect is.  There is a very valid reason for MMFHC to file the complaint.