Fear and Housing on the Campaign Trail, 2008

Kunstler's words have been haunting me in recent weeks as we watch the avalanche of bankruptcies, foreclosures, layoffs and scandal roaring through the economy, and struggle to comprehend the scale of the federal bailout money being feverishly poured onto the flames. There is a sickening sense that what is happening is beyond anyone's understanding or control. That people have a lot to be angry about is beyond question.

However, this understandable anger is being directed by some right-wing political partisans at the most unlikely of targets: community organizers, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), and most of all, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN -- the latter of which, in addition to voter registration drives, has been a major force for community revitalization efforts and housing projects, notably in post-Katrina New Orleans.

And the McCain campaign has been actively encouraging this displaced blame. Worse, this effort to discredit community activism and revitalization is meshed with extreme anti-Obama rhetoric, with the result that a palpable mob-mentality is brewing at McCain-Palin rallies. Some observers are warning the McCain campaign that if the Senator doesn't tone down his rhetoric and that of his running mate Gov. Sarah Palin, there could easily be violence. In an op-ed for the Baltimore Sun, Frank Schaeffer accuses Senator McCain of

"...deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence. Your rallies are beginning to look, sound, feel and smell like lynch mobs...John McCain and Sarah Palin, you are playing with fire, and you know it. You are unleashing the monster of American hatred and prejudice, to the peril of all of us. You are doing this in wartime. You are doing this as our economy collapses. You are doing this in a country with a history of assassinations."

While all Americans should be alarmed about what this sort of discourse is doing to the health of their democracy, readers of this site should be specifically concerned about how this ire is being turned against planning projects with which many of us are professionally involved -- that is to say, housing and revitalization projects in low-income communities.

Regardless of the outcome of this election, housing for the poor has become a controversial project about which powerful political and economic forces have been violently unleashed. It is incumbent on planners to do what we can to restore reasonableness to this debate, and to ensure that the needs of lower-income communities are not cast aside in the fallout from the economic meltdown -- and more ominously, in the search for someone on which it can be blamed.