In a Labor Day interview with the Business Journal, Westchester County Executive George Latimer dismissed President Donald Trump’s claims that Westchester is an example of a suburban area being destroyed by crime and sinking real estate values because of housing that’s variously described as low-income, workforce or affordable.
Conservative commentator Laura Ingraham asked Trump during an interview on her Fox News cable show, “Do you think that suburbs are in danger if (Democratic presidential nominee Joe) Biden is elected. We know the cities are in danger. But are the suburbs in danger because they say that’s fear-mongering.”
“I know the suburbs. Look. Westchester was ground zero, okay, for what they were trying to do,” Trump said. “They were trying to destroy the suburban, beautiful, but the American dream, really. They want low-income housing and with that comes a lot of other problems including crime. It may not be nice to say but I’ll say it.”
Ingraham interrupted, “You’re not saying all poor people are criminals, though.”
Trump responded, “No, I’m not saying that at all, but there is a level of violence that you don’t see. So you have this beautiful community in the suburbs including women, right, women, they want security.”
The White House Press Office did not respond to several requests from the Business Journal for statistics or other information to support Trump’s claim of Westchester being ground zero for crime and efforts to destroy suburbia related to housing or any other factors.
As recent polls showed support for his reelection was weakening in the suburbs, especially among white women, Trump aimed some of his rhetoric toward suburbanites, saying of Democrats, “They want to abolish the suburbs by empowering far left bureaucrats to eliminate single-family zoning.”
Recently, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) at Trump’s behest effectively repealed the Obama administration’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, which had forced an examination of local zoning to see if it was discriminatory. In a Tweet, Trump said, “I am happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood. Your housing prices will go up and crime will go down.”
“I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about,” Latimer said. Westchester County did reach an accommodation with HUD several years ago to add 750 units of affordable housing in communities that had none or did not already have a reasonable number.
“If anything, they’re fairly small 10-unit, 40-unit projects or set-asides in market-rate projects. It’s not plugging into your neighborhoods 11,000 units. It’s a made-up storyline,” Latimer said.
Latimer said affordable housing is essential to the suburbs because without it teachers, firefighters, police, health care workers and others whose salaries do not reach the heights of wall street executives could not afford to live and work there.
“Affordable housing is part of economic development. You cannot retain the major corporations in this area, cannot attract the major corporations to this area, if you have a housing shortage of affordable housing,” Latimer said.
“If people whose compensation does not reach the CEO level cannot afford to live in your area, the corporation doesn’t stay or doesn’t move in. This is also about essential services, emergency services. This is not about social engineering. This is about the most practical economic development.”
Latimer said that his administration counts about 1,400 units of affordable housing in the pipeline right now, including standalone projects and units that developers have agreed to include in their market-rate projects, often 10% to 20% of the total unit count.
“From our standpoint in Westchester, we incentivize and work with developers who do want to add affordable housing to the mix,” Latimer said.
“They’re not big chunks,” Latimer said. “We’re going to see 24 units in Port Chester opening in November, 75 units in Greenburgh opening in either November or December, and then there are going to be set-asides in other settings. That’s not destroying the suburbs. That’s saving the suburbs.”
Latimer recounted that during his career in the private sector he lived in: Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia; Fairfax County, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C.; and a suburban portion of Summit County in Ohio, a suburb of Akron and Cleveland.
“I have some experience living in suburbs of major cities,” Latimer said. “The story is the same in those three suburbs as it is in Westchester. You’re trying to deal with suburban needs and affordable housing helps meet some of those suburban needs.”
Latimer said Trump may think he knows a lot about Westchester because he owns property in the county or because he familiarized himself with the dispute between the federal government and the county over zoning and housing that was essentially settled while Latimer’s predecessor, Republican Robert P. Astorino was in office.
“I can’t say what Trump’s motivation is to say what he did. But, I can say it’s not true. It’s absolutely not true,” Latimer said.
“I can take you in the car right now and show you affordable projects, 45 units in the village of Larchmont, which is one of the wealthiest communities in Westchester County. I can show you an affordable housing building in Rye city, 41 units. I can show you some affordable townhouses in Rye city, another 10 or 12 units, all affordable housing. You tell me if you see any destruction of the municipality. At best it’s a mistake in fact. At worst it’s purposeful to try to scare people.”
LATIMER LIVES IN RYE, LETS PUT AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN HIS NEIGHBORHOOD
I live in Yonkers and there are 40 units in my neighborhood. I have no problem with them here. In fact, they’ve been here for 30 years. The neighborhood is no less safe and home prices have quadrupled since then. A bunch of scared racist white people did leave, though. Their loss, I guess.
Imagine that???
Donald Trump has always had a problem with telling the truth – about anything! His nickname “Don the Con†fits him to a tee.
Bill, the t-rump economy was not strong. He’s got his faux blonde idiot daughter pretending to create jobs. Yet, she’s not created one single job opportunity and neither has the T-rump administration. What’s your definition of nepotism when he’s got his slumlord son in-law in-charge of covid and as of today T-rump has murdered over 180,000 people. Bill, are you some troll from the Asstorino team? Sorry Bill, you are delusional to think the rumpus in the White House has done anything but create havoc daily. Trumpy is a bigly hot mess where his cult members don’t see the pattern of foreclosures by T-rump like Casinos, hotels, vodka, clothing lies…you name it trumpy touches it and it turns into manure.