A large majority of Americans agree with President Donald Trump’s decision to reverse an Obama-era regulation designed to bring “diversity” to neighborhoods through incorporating low-income housing, according to poll of 1,000 likely voters.
Rasmussen Reports found that 83 percent of respondents said the federal government should not play a role in deciding where people live. Just 10 percent disagreed.
Although less than the 83 percent of voters in 2015, when President Barack Obama was ready to announce the regulation, said it is not the federal government’s job to diversity neighborhoods by mixing people of different financial demographics, 65 percent in this poll agreed.
The Obama-era rule mostly targeted more affluent, suburban neighborhoods with single family homes.
But 23 percent now say government should play a role in diversifying neighborhoods, up from 8 percent five years ago.
Rasmussen reported on the political and racial divides of its poll:
Democrats are stronger advocates of efforts by the government to diversify neighborhoods than Republicans and voters not affiliated with either major party are. But even among voters in former President Obama’s party, 56 percent say it’s not the government’s job to diversify neighborhoods, a view shared by 73 percent of Republicans and 68 percent of unaffiliated voters.
Little changed from the previous survey is the 40 percent of all voters who say the racial or ethnic make-up of the neighborhood was important in deciding where they live now, with 19 percent who say it was Very Important. Fifty-nine percent (59 percent) say the racial and ethic make-up of the neighborhood was not important to their decision, including 28 percent who say it was Not At All Important.
For blacks (63 percent), the racial or ethnic make-up of their neighborhood was much more important than it was to whites (35 percent) and other minority voters (44 percent). Twenty percent (20 percent) of blacks and 21 percent of other minority voters feel the federal government should play a role in deciding where people can live, but just six percent (6 percent) of whites agree. Seventy-one percent (71 percent) of whites say it is not the government’s job to diversify neighborhoods, compared to 52 percent of blacks and 53 percent of other minority voters.
The poll was taken August 2-3, 2020, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence.
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