It would behoove citizens to understand that once the Clovis AH Plan is officially implemented as the ordinance requires, it becomes the city's liability to enforce it.  There are many affordable housing advocacy groups, watching and waiting for the city to fail to provide adequate affordable housing as the ordinance has stated Clovis must do.  These groups can and will sue the city in order to force their own agendas, all while using the city of Clovis' Affordable Housing Plan as their justification.  Here are some examples of lawsuits that have followed Affordable Housing Ordinances. 

Folsom, CA:  Folsom's city council's AHP was due for a review in February of this year.  The city council decided to stop requiring developers to provide a certain percentage of low-income housing in order to build in Folsom (a practice called inclusionary zoning).  The Sacramento Housing Alliance disagreed and filed a lawsuit against the city in April of 2011.  SHA's argument:  there is not enough workforce (low-income) housing in Folsom.  SHA believes the city has the responsibility to provide such housing, therefore, Folsom has an obligation to continue to force developers to build a certain percentage of low-income restricted properties.   Folsom will be forced to spend in legal fees in order to defend the city council's decision to amend its own ordinance to promote growth in the city. 

Westchester, NY: In 2006, a group named the Anti-Discrimination Center sued the county of Westchester over what they said was the county's lack of providing affordable housing.  A $63 million dollar settlement was awarded in the name of affordable housing advocacy, and the ADC received $7.3 million dollars from the suit.  Ouch!

In 2009, the same group was threatening to sue the county again for failure to follow court orders given in the 2006 case.  The county has until 2013 to fulfill the court ordered mandate to build a certain number of affordable housing units.  The ADC is again claiming that both the county and federal government is not doing enough to advance the cause of affordable housing as that group sees fit.

Judicial activism is rampant among towns that have Affordable Housing Ordinances and Plans.  AH advocacy groups use court leverage and the city's own plans to force cities to meet their own agendas.

Once a city enacts an AH ordinance, there is no retracting it.  If a town's normal market rate or high end housing development is at a standstill because of the requirements put on developers to provide "affordable housing" or because of the inequitable treatment of reduced fees and grants given to developers of lower income housing that has been proven to be of no matter. 

Logically, when a person knows Clovis suffers not from a lack of "affordable" housing, but from a lack of housing supply period, stalled or slowed new development could mean the death of the city.  And that's just what AH Plans bring with them once the lawsuits start.

Lawsuits on behalf of AH advocacy groups will make their way to Clovis if this ordinance is passed.  Through the ordinance, the city makes itself responsible (and thus liable) to provide affordable housing to its populace. 

Do you really believe that it is the city's responsibility to provide housing to its citizens, and, if you do believe this, who pays for that housing?  Let us remind you, the government takes your wealth from your pocket to provide such things as affordable housing for other people.   Government mandated and controlled affordable housing is just another form of wealth redistribution through taxation.  The next question:  at whose expense will the city defend itself against the lawsuits and agendas of affordable housing advocacy groups?  The answer to this, again, is simple: the expense will fall on you, the taxpayer.

Angela Kissell, Clovis, NM (Printer friendly version)