Let’s dismiss the social engineering types on both sides and get down to what everyone knows – democratic “free market” societies rely on property rights as a fundamental building block.

Both sides believe the ability to buy and sell property is an essential element if you plan to improve your material standard of living and that of your children. They may differ on what constitutes an infringement of that right, but no one can argue that taking one’s home is not an infringement. Liberals still remember how the black middle class was literally wiped out in some areas because of Urban Renewal.

One of the most annoying things that happens in the hot urban markets is for the developers to co-opt the support of some affordable housing activist group with NON-BINDING promises, have a big PR event where they talk about innovation and fighting for working families, then using this as a club to beat the “yuppies” to death with if they oppose their homes being taken. They try the guilt trip thing. It used to work politically, but now it is backfiring.

Up here in Brooklyn, a developer is poised to get nearly a billion dollars worth of real-estate for nothing. Fortunately, some brave local politicians that represent the district have decided to take it to the matresses with Mayor Bloomberg (and Pataki, who is the whore of whores when it comes to boondoggles). Most of these politicians are African American representing mostly white folks who are threatened by the ED. They proposed an alternate plan based on public input which was facilitated by a young architect who also happened to be black. The interesting dynamic is watching them explain to the affordable housing folks why they are doing it. At first the housing advocates are skeptical, but they are being won over. They can be convinced that they are patsies, and that even if they weren’t, ED is not inherently good for the working poor trying to get a leg up.

I hope I have good news to report on this someday, but so far, the battle for Brooklyn (like the one early in the Revolutionary War)doesn’t look good.

Fight the good fight.

Wonder if Justice Kennedy will listen to the “national consensus.”