HOUSING BOND TAKES FROM POOR.

Byline: WALTER MOORE Local View

CAREER politicians -- acting on behalf of the developers, bankers, lawyers and other special interests eager to receive your tax dollars -- want you to believe Los Angeles is in the throes of a dire and unprecedented ``affordable housing'' crisis.

Your civic duty as a homeowner, they imply, is to pay any tax, bear any bond and endure any hardship so that others less fortunate than you will have a roof over their heads.

But it's all a scam.

Let's start with the definition of ``affordable housing.'' That term comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which defines it as follows: ``Housing for which the occupant is paying no more than 30 percent of his or her income for gross housing costs, including utilities.''

You read that right: If housing costs 30 percent of your income, it is ``affordable''; if it costs one penny more, it is not.

To see how absurd that definition is, let's suppose there's a week or two of really hot weather, and you crank up the air conditioning, and your rent and utilities ``skyrocket'' from 30 percent to 30.5 percent of your income. Boom!

According to the ``affordable housing'' advocates, you can't ``afford'' your housing any more!

It gets worse. The proponents of ``affordable housing'' in Los Angeles do not care whether the bond measure they've proposed for the November ballot makes housing less affordable for current homeowners.

Let's suppose you're a homeowner in L.A. who's already spending 50 percent of your income on your loan payments, insurance, maintenance and utilities -- including the city's new trash tax. Guess what? The ``affordable housing'' advocates want you to pay for their billion-dollar bond, even though you're already above the 50 percent mark, so that other people won't have to pay more than 30 percent!

Not angry yet? It gets even worse.

You may think that the ``affordable housing'' programs would only benefit poor people, or at least people who make less money than you do. Wrong!

The proposed billion-dollar bond would be added to the property tax bills of all homeowners, regardless of their income, for the next 20 years. So you have to pay for this bond even if you're elderly and living on a fixed income.

The recipients of your tax dollars, however, may have a bigger income than you -- even a six-figure income.

That's because eligibility for the proposed ``affordable housing'' program includes people who earn up to 150 percent of ``area median income.'' Translated into plain English, that means your money will go to a family of four that earns $103,968 per year to help them buy a home.

It's Robin Hood in reverse: Take from the poor and give to the rich.

Heck, even Karl Marx at least applied a ``means'' test: ``From each according to his ability ...''

Should you -- or your elderly parents living on a fixed income -- have to pay higher taxes in order to subsidize the purchase of real estate by people with six-figure incomes? No!

Should your housing costs be increased above 30 percent of your income so some other guy can keep his below 30 percent? Again, no!

Don't be fooled by the political equivalent of false advertising. The term ``affordable housing'' is a dysphemism, i.e., a derogatory or unpleasant term used instead of a pleasant or neutral one. Career politicians use this dysphemism for a reason: You might vote for higher taxes to solve an ``affordable housing'' crisis, but you would never knowingly raise your own taxes so someone with a higher income can spend a smaller percentage of it on housing.