Canada Free Press
By Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh
Monday, January 6, 2014
An American diplomat who flew over communist Romania during Ceausescu’s reign of terror asked the innocent question, where are the farmers and their homes, I see nothing but fields of green everywhere?
The accompanying hosts looked at each other embarrassed and nobody answered the question. It was too un diplomatic and dangerous to explain to this westerner coming from the land of freedom and private property that the farmers’ land had been confiscated, collectivized, and the former owners moved by force to government assigned concrete block apartments ranging in size from 200-400 square feet.
These apartments were located in blocks with 2-4 entrances depending on whether they were five or nine stories high. The five-story buildings did not have elevators; the nine-story buildings had lifts that could safely carry two individuals at a time and were seldom operational. Renters of various ages and physical abilities had the joy of climbing stairs every day.
Social engineers had decided that land was better used in co-operative farms owned by the communist government. Private homes located on farm land were bulldozed and people were moved either in a compact village attached to the collective farm, with little room between single homes, or in the densely populated cities with grey concrete apartments mushrooming overnight.
The communist party elites had decided that having too much private space was bourgeois, the socialist men needed just enough space to eat and sleep, the rest of the time had to be spent at work.
This brings me to the current trend in the U.S. to reduce Americans’ living space to as little as possible by changing zoning laws without their consent, using visioning committees composed of local agreeable supervisors and outside non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with lots of available grant money from HUD and other government agencies.
U.N. Agenda 21 is behind zoning, regionalism, land and water use, Sustainable Development, global warming, wealth redistribution, social engineering, Smart Growth, Green Growth, cap and trade, Smart Grid, Smart Meters, global citizens, IB World schools, Common Core standards, biofuels, the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), gun control, just to name a few.
Nationally syndicated talk show hosts have finally started speaking against U.N. Agenda 21 elements. I have connected all the parts in my best-selling book, “U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy”.
U.N. environmental regionalist Seven50 plans for Florida
A political refuge appealed to the St. Lucie County Commissioners in Florida ()at a meeting about the U.N. environmental regionalist Seven50 plans for Florida. “I do not come here to lose my freedom; I beg you – get out of Seven50. Do not destroy our Freedom.”
A long line of citizens vociferously opposed such regionalism and pleaded with “local elected officials to reject the takeover of Florida’s private property.” “
“I am opposed to Seven50… to the loss of our property rights by U.N. Agenda 21, the new world order communist Marxist project.”
Large grants from HUD and this administration have divided our country into 11 nationwide regions, including the east coast of Florida. The Seven50 Regionalism Plan has already been adopted in the Gore triangle counties south of St. Lucie and Indian River counties. Vero Beach, IRC rejected the plan based on a “vertical authority flow chart” controlled by unelected federal bureaucrats influenced by globalist non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who plan to “stack-and-pack 200-foot dwelling spaces” and move citizens off their private property.
Stack-and-pack living quarters in the 200 square foot aPodments
Suzanne Eovaldi describes the typical stack-and-pack living quarters in the 200 square foot aPodments building in Sammamish, Washington. Resident Judy Green “shares the kitchen with seven other tenants on the second floor.” To get to her loft cubicle, she must climb six flights of stairs in the absence of elevators. Cars are not allowed on account of global warming. The micro-units are the size of a hotel room and rent for $600-900 per month. The micro-housing units increase the population density of the area tremendously.
The government will impose its best practices of “Sustainable Urbanism” which will force areas to adopt “sustainable development” and “equitable communities,” changing the counties’ desired low density character and scale to high-density crime-ridden slums.
The American Coalition 4 Property Rights explains on its website why the Seven50 Regional Plan must be stopped with its Sustainable Urbanism and the Smart Code solution to urban sprawl. Regionalism will fundamentally alter the make-up of our society and of our property rights or lack thereof.
“Social engineering is on the verge of being imposed on entire neighborhoods, adults, and children alike.” The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will dismantle local zoning and force people to move into certain areas in order to achieve what they consider “racial, economic, and ethnic diversity.” This is “nationalizing neighborhoods” on a grand scale. This is done for our “own good and to achieve utopia.” By obliterating zoning regulations, we will have neighborhoods by government quota. (Rush Limbaugh monologue, September 12, 2013)
Rush Limbaugh pointed out that “HUD’s power grab is based on the mistaken belief that zoning and discrimination are the same, zoning is disguised discrimination.” Introducing 200 square feet pods between single family homes is “social justice.”
The American Planning Association issued a HUD Smart Growth document, a blueprint of goals to replace single family housing. The 76-page study by APA’s Planning Advisory Service, report number 548, published on July 2007, had the “objective to examine, on a pilot basis, whether zoning impedes the development of higher-density, multifamily housing in growing metropolitan areas.”
The study presumed multifamily housing to be the most affordable type of housing yet it did not evaluate this presumption in the study. “High-density residential development is not always affordable, and low density development is not always costly. Ample high-density and multi-family zoning is neither necessary nor sufficient to produce affordable housing.”(p. iv) Why then destroy suburbia and why dictate to other people how they should live?
The authors identified other factors besides zoning that can limit multifamily housing stock such as market conditions, land availability, parcelization, provision of public services, planning goals such as protecting open spaces or rural areas, and existing land-use patterns.
The APA study recommends:
Support the Regional collection and integration of land use regulatory data (maintain comprehensive data on zoning and other regulatory restraints)
Encourage state and Regional governments to provide oversight of local land-use policies.
Focus state and Regional oversight policies on quantitative performance measures.
Continue to develop better measures of zoning barriers and support additional research on the effects of barriers on housing markets.
For these authors, “the critical question now is not whether regulatory barriers to affordable housing exist in some communities, but whether it is possible to identify such communities and craft an appropriate policy response.”
In my December 23, 2013 interview with Brian Lilley of Sun News Network in Canada, I explained the “affordable housing” fight in Fairfax County, Virginia, where almost all members of the Board of Supervisors and the Planning Commission are crafting a plan to place Lilliputian slum dwellings in every area of the county. These are called Residential Studio Units (RSUs) with a total surface of 220-320 square feet. Each high-rise would contain 75 such units and one parking space per unit. Such units would reduce property values, change neighborhoods, increase population density, cause more traffic congestion, and increase crime in the name of “affordable housing” for the poor, low wage workers, and “diversity.”
Australia: What the Rats in the silo have planned for us.
THE ECO-CON THAT KEEPS ON TAKING
