Local township doesn't want you moving in

Imagine an America where - if you're poor or working-class - you're considered a trespasser just for being. And when the police handcuff you, wealthy locals are allowed to hurl any dirty insult they can at you. And - as a punishment for your "trespassing" - you must hold a sign in public admitting your "crime" and be subjected to more abuse by passersby.

The community in this story is far from being at that point. But if it continues at the rate it's going, it will be someday.

Anderson Township outside Cincinnati has joined the list of local suburbs with policies in place to keep out the poor. It's what I call a twilight township. Although Anderson is far from being alone among local communities in this regard, the excuses that this Ohio township's public officials use as an attempt to justify it are mind-boggling.

In the past few years, the township has accepted almost $700,000 in public housing grants. However, township trustees have now voted unanimously to pull out of the agreement to build public housing.

Look, if you're gonna take the money, at least build the housing. Where is all that money going? It's turned out to be really just a handout for a jurisdiction where most folks are at least middle-class.

In rejecting public housing, the trustees listened to the voices of elitists in the community. One resident sniffed, "There are so many wonderful things about Anderson that would be diminished very quickly by an increase in public housing." No specifics were offered as to what would be "diminished." Just elitist hyperbole.

Anderson Township Trustee Peggy Reis boasted that public housing is a no-no because "we tried to put into place mechanisms that will keep our property values high."

Thanks for the admission that you don't like the poor moving in, Peggy. Federal laws protecting the housing rights of the poor are much too weak, but Reis's statement is enough for the federal government to sue the township back to the Stone Age.

My city doesn't have laws to keep skyscraper condos for the rich from sprouting up with no limits (and pricing everybody else out of town), so what gives a township the right to have laws designed to keep homes for the poor from being built?

I don't wish to pick on Anderson Township exclusively. Lately, right-wingers in Green Township have been flooding the Cincinnati Enquirer's website with truly vile hate speech against the poor - in protest of efforts to build public housing there. And I've had my own experiences with hateful, petty public officials in my own county. Fifteen years ago, significant lumps of Campbell County were already like the America described at the beginning of this entry where the poor are publicly humiliated. Last thing we need is for that obstacle course to be reintroduced. If it comes here, I will fight.

Class warfare rules the roost in modern America.