Office Of Affordable Housing Preservation: Fill & Download for Free

Let me be blunt: there’s absolutely nothing written into Federal law that forbids a sitting President from being indicted. Nothing whatsoever.The only reason anyone supposes this to be the case is because internal DOJ policy does not allow a criminal indictment to be brought before a sitting President - part of the reason why Robert Mueller did not consider an indictment against Trump, despite considerable evidence that Trump had committed multiple counts of Obstruction of Justice in the course of the Mueller investigation.That policy is purely designed to keep the Executive Branch from acting against the individual who is, in effect, their boss: members of the DOJ largely consider that a conflict of interest - and therefore believe that Congress (using their oversight prerogatives over the Executive Branch) should police the President’s actions.In reality, though, the authority Congress hold over the Executive Branch is political in nature, not judicial: they cannot charge the President with a crime in any formal respect. Their sole power is to determine if a President is unfit for office, and the only outcome available to them is to remove that President from office, following an initial Impeachment inquiry, then a full hearing before the House (followed by a vote), and finally a trial in the Senate.There’s nothing written anywhere in Federal law that prevents the DOJ from handing over an indictment, however. The Constitution does not afford the President any such protections - and, indeed, I’d argue, it actively dictates that action be taken against a President accused of criminal misconduct. After all, the Presidential Oath of Office (drawn from Article 2, Section I of the Constitution) specifically states:“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”The act of committing a crime utterly invalidates this oath: after all, a criminal or corrupt President is acting against the Constitution, and contrary to the laws of the land that are enshrined within it. I doubt the Founders would agree that a President cannot be indicted: had they imagined that the Electoral College would fail in their duty to safeguard the Presidency from a corrupt individual, I suspect they would have insisted on indictment.To suggest otherwise is frankly an indication that you believe that the President stands above the law, rather than serving as a protector of it. That’s a very short drop towards pure authoritarianism - and given that the notion of a totalitarian dictatorship was something that the US gained independence in order to move away from, I can’t imagine the Founders would have backed such a view.So, no, I think a President should absolutely be indictable under Federal law, but the political climate (for the moment) seems to be heading in the other direction. That’s a very troubling thought.

Very little, except perhaps direct housing grants based on income, but that’s not a very good way to alleviate poverty. Universal basic income would be a better bet.The real problem is that housing is under the control of the provinces, which oversee the municipalities which oversee zoning and building construction.This is a section of Montreal, which until recently had affordable housing (it’s going up due to increased demand. It isn’t hard and here’s what Montreal has been doing right for decades:Make renting the norm and owning the exceptionHave housing closely packedPut housing close to other servicesAllow lots of innovation in housing solutionsAllow obsolete buildings to be demolished and replaced, or at least make it easy to adapt them to new uses.Here in the Greater Toronto Area:Owning is seen as the norm and renting is the exception.Housing is on large lotsResidential uses are separated from commercial usesIt’s almost impossible to get permission to build anything other than single family homesHeritage buildings are so scarce they’re zealously protected, and it’s hard to change the use of an obsolete buildingFor example, condos are pretty much identical to apartment buildings, but given similar costs of construction and a tendency to look for “quick returns”, as well as a feeling that ownership is “correct”, we don’t build a lot of apartment buildings in the GTA. The further you are from the core (where most of the high rises are being built) the harder it is to get permission to build to high densities.And a lot of this is driven by NIMBYism. People in Toronto and Vancouver want to preserve their low density neighbourhoods, and the values of their property. Landlords want to keep the rents high and charge the city for disadvantaged people to use them rather than allow more high density housing to be built. There’s a lot of inertia from city halls because people who can’t afford to live in those municipalities can’t vote. Municipalities in Ontario are rewarded for making housing expensive by having their politicians returned to office.

I’m going to go a little further and answer the question: “What are some of the best intentioned zoning laws with the worst results where you live?”Two in particular come to mind.First, low-density zoning around Marin County in particular. It was intended to preserve the natural areas and keep Marin a peaceful, bucolic community. What has happened instead is that it has become very expensive to build even a single home. So much so that the typical price for new construction is now over $1000/ft upon sale. This means very few people can realistically live there without tons of money. In an even more ironic twist, while it is difficult to get development to move forward, it nevertheless does from time to time and only at low density so you end up with much more sprawl. The 101 past the Golden Gate bridge is testimony to the transportation nightmare that is “slow growth” policies. When you put it all together the idea was to preserve nature but instead the zoning is forcing residents to spread further and further out into every nook and cranny to find reasonable housing options and business opportunities. It seems to come from the belief that if you don’t encourage growth it just won’t happen. Instead it happens in all the least desirable ways and sets the area up for constant legal battles as it fights its own future. Anticipating growth and managing it appropriately instead of refusing to accept the inevitable course of things is a better way to go. Marin’s difficulties today are directly related to zoning choices made 30 years ago.The second zoning law that makes no sense is the housing emphasis for transit-oriented development. The basic idea is that we should have much more density near transit hubs like our BART (light rail) stations to facilitate and encourage people to use appropriate mass transit to commute to work. What’s funny is that it’s been interpreted to mean that we should build housing near transit. However, there is only a subsegment of the population who wants/needs to live in a high-rise condo. Most families still demand a private back yard and that means single-family spaces farther from the employment centers and certainly not stacked in condos. I’m personally a large fan of higher density and I do expect the expectations of what family living can look like to evolve but there’s a much simpler way to solve this problem that is in alignment with people’s values today. Move the jobs around transit centers. Then you can create robust retail, entertainment, and office elements around the transit centers so that they become a destination. Anyone can get there by mass transit from any other node on the network (i.e. suburban stations) thus relieving the burden on transportation infrastructure and creating more housing choice both in the core and at the periphery of the transit nodes. Transit-oriented development is a great idea but the implementation has favored putting housing in the urban core instead of jobs. If you look at most large cities today it seems almost exactly the reverse. This situation is the result of local zoning laws. The situation gets even stranger when it becomes evident that most of the housing being built is affordable, government-subsidized housing. So instead of jobs we are creating clustered poverty around our most valuable infrastructure. We tried that idea in the 60s and it led to ghettoes. The cost of those units is very high and the benefits not shared across a broad spectrum of the population. While I support the idea of affordable housing it still makes much more sense to include affordable units alongside market rate units in less costly areas (more units/$) and keep the focus on jobs at the transit nodes. Oakland has done both. On the one hand, they put up some 400 units of affordable housing and a large parking garage (yes, very ironic) at the Macarthur BART station but they are also encouraging 1M new sq ft of office space around the 19th and 12th street BART stations. So Macarthur gets all affordable housing and no jobs while downtown gets all jobs and no housing at all. In contrast, the Broadway-Valdez area plan specifically tries to create an attractive retail area with housing elements and will likely succeed in creating a new, vibrant round-the-clock destination district. Except it’s not really that close to any of the transit nodes. You have to take a bus then change to BART. Once you switch systems (AC Transit to BART) you start to see what a patchwork quilt of jurisdictions exist across our transit options. All implemented through zoning laws.FYI, it’s easy to be critical but I do hope to participate in forging better solutions as time goes on in cooperation with local government and the communities they serve.