InsideNoVA: How the chaos at the border affects our life
Published in InsideNova by Stephen Kent
A standoff at the Texas-Mexico border has escalated into a crisis of American federalism. The Texas National Guard and state troopers are obstructing U.S. Border Patrol from removing barbed wire installed by Texas to impede illegal migration along the Rio Grande River.
December marked the highest monthly total ever recorded for migrant encounters with U.S. officials, approximately 302,000. Cities nationwide, including liberal areas like Denver, New York and Chicago, are struggling, prompting Democrat mayors to seek relief from the influx of migrants
For American communities everywhere, there is incredible stress on the system. Everything from homeless shelters to hospitals, public schools to police departments and even sanitation is being compromised due to the influx of new people into cities. The consequences of chaos at the border manifests itself in ways both dramatic and boring. Last month in Manassas, I attended the homeowners association meeting for my Bristoe Station townhome community. As usual, the gathering of homeowners and renters in our affordable housing development became contentious. The issue of parking availability and towing has overtaken every single meeting for at least the past four years.
Our community of 505 single-family townhomes has 1,048 parking spaces, enough for two vehicles per unit with roughly 40 extra spaces for visitors. What goes unsaid at these meetings, but what everyone knows, is that hundreds of the units are overcrowded and housing multiple families.
Some units function as boarding houses for new arrivals to Northern Virginia. As such, there are far more people and cars than parking spaces and little to no legal avenues for enforcement of housing codes.
Townhome residents want solutions, and they’ve been demanding them of our HOA for years. At one point, homeowners and renters both were on their feet screaming at one another and accusing the local towing company of foul play when it came to whose cars were getting towed for parking violations. Several Manassas police officers were in attendance to get face time with the community, but also to make sure things remained civil.
A Manassas police officer reminded the residents that they are not alone in dealing with this problem. Parking has roiled low-income housing areas across Prince William County, and in some cases started to spill into Manassas’ more insulated single-family home neighborhoods, “for other reasons, which I won’t get into tonight.”
The unspeakable was almost spoken by this officer. Residents could scream at one another and tear their community apart night after night and meeting after meeting, but the issue is not parking hang-tags, towing company contracts or cheaters breaking the community rules on storing extra cars in parking spots.
The problem is the border crisis, and our HOA chaos is just a casualty of it.
This is the case for communities nationwide. Neighborhoods become the downstream disaster areas of failures at the federal level.
Telling you about a battle over parking in my HOA feels melodramatic – and maybe it is. Some neighborhoods have far worse problems as a result of the border crisis, especially in border towns. But I’m sharing this because Americans increasingly don’t know where to look for solutions to their problems.
While my Manassas neighbors rage at one another over an impossible situation with parking spots, discussions about filling potholes, improving playgrounds and smoothing sidewalks are pushed aside. We’re losing the ability to govern ourselves on the smallest level.
So often, voters rely on the President and Congress to improve their lives and forget about city council and local elections. But the dissolution of order in a working-class racially diverse community like mine leaves residents furious and distrustful of their neighbors.
Every community meeting sees the anger burn hotter, and I worry it will eventually lead to a physical altercation. The irony is that this issue is a rare one where localism isn’t the neglected solution. This is a problem for Congress and the President of the United States, Joe Biden. When will they help us?
Stephen Kent is a resident of Manassas and a political writer. Follow him on X: @StephenKentX