From the Sacramento Bee ( Nice try, but I hear the cops shut the site down yesterday - DG)
By Cynthia Hubert chubert@sacbee.com
Saturday, Aug. 22, 2009 - 12:00 am | Page 3B
A Sacramento attorney who has championed the rights of homeless people is opening his private property to campers who need a place to sleep at night.
Mark Merin, who for years has challenged the city's and county's treatment of the homeless, is leasing a parcel of land in downtown Sacramento to an association of people seeking to establish a legal "safe ground" campsite. Three advocacy organizations are leading the "safe ground" effort.
Merin would not disclose terms of the lease but said the vacant lot is on C Street between 12th and 14th streets and should accommodate 20 to 30 tents. Campers had already begun to move in Friday.
The arrangement, Merin said, would prevent police from ticketing homeless people for trespassing and from seizing their property. It would not, however, stop officers from enforcing a city ordinance that prohibits camping in non-designated areas for longer than 24 hours.
Merin said he hopes police will look the other way on the camping ordinance, which is not strictly enforced against anyone other than homeless people. If they continue to enforce the ordinance, he said, he will challenge them in court.
Sgt. Norm Leong, a spokesman for the Sacramento Police Department, said officers would "consider taking enforcement action" against campers only if the site was "unsafe or unsanitary" or if neighbors or others complained.
"We would step back and look at it," he said. "We wouldn't feel the need to jump in as soon as someone pitches a tent and break it down."
But Leong questioned why Merin and others would open a campsite on their own even as city and community leaders are working toward establishing a legal campground that would offer the homeless such services as garbage pickup, sanitation and social support.
"Why would you initiate it now, when the mayor is trying to figure out a legal solution?" he asked.
Joan Burke of Loaves & Fishes, which provides a variety of services to homeless people in a complex within walking distance of Merin's property, said Mayor Kevin Johnson's task force is doing potentially groundbreaking work. However, "we can't wait" for the political process to play out, she said.
"The winter is coming, and people have no place to sleep," said Burke, who served on the task force. "The current situation is intolerable."
Merin said he would like to see other private property owners offer vacant land so that several small campsites with basic services could be established, perhaps with the city's blessing.
"We need to take care of those less fortunate than us," said Merin, who lives in the area where the campsite is to be established. "It's as simple as that."
Monday, August 24, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Still more on the Westchester County Settlement
[This is an LTE from one of the attorneys in the Westchester County housing discrimination case settlement]
The Court Is Right About Westchester County Housing
Your description of the landmark settlement that emerged from the Anti-Discrimination Center's lawsuit against Westchester County as "the government deciding where it wants people to live" ("Color-Coding the Suburbs," Review & Outlook, Aug. 15) bears no relation to the actual terms of the agreement nor to the history of residential racial segregation in Westchester County.
Westchester is deeply, deeply residentially segregated. A dozen of its municipalities have African-American populations of less than 1%. Nine more municipalities have African-American populations of less than 2%. The principal indices of segregation show, remarkably, that Westchester was more segregated in 2000 than it was in 1950.
One should not be fooled into thinking that it is only poorer African-Americans who are living separately from whites. The most widely used measure of segregation has demonstrated that African-American households earning more than $150,000 per year are more segregated from whites than are African-American households earning less than $50,000 per year.
Recipients of federal community development funds have long been required to identify and act to overcome barriers to fair housing choice. Indeed, recipients can only receive grant funds if they represent that they have done so. From 2000 to 2006, Westchester received more than $50 million by making such representations. Earlier this year, a federal judge granted the Anti-Discrimination Center's motion for partial summary judgment, finding as a matter of law that Westchester had "utterly failed" to meet its affirmatively-furthering-fair-housing obligations, and finding as well that every one of Westchester's representations that it had done so was "false or fraudulent."
The only "social engineering" involved in the case was the evidence of Westchester County having perpetuated segregation by not using its authority to overcome artificial barriers to affordable housing development in its whitest municipalities while at the same time channeling such development into areas of concentrated African-American population.
The settlement is designed to overcome the rigid exclusionary zoning that has prevented both for-profit and not-for-profit developers from constructing the type of context-sensitive affordable housing in Westchester towns and villages that they have built elsewhere in the country. By creating these opportunities in communities where they have been absent, and by making it clear for the first time that people of all races and backgrounds are welcome throughout the county, the settlement both creates real consumer choice and, 41 years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, takes an important step toward ending the legacy of "two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal."
Craig Gurian, Executive Director
Anti-Discrimination Center
New York
The Court Is Right About Westchester County Housing
Your description of the landmark settlement that emerged from the Anti-Discrimination Center's lawsuit against Westchester County as "the government deciding where it wants people to live" ("Color-Coding the Suburbs," Review & Outlook, Aug. 15) bears no relation to the actual terms of the agreement nor to the history of residential racial segregation in Westchester County.
Westchester is deeply, deeply residentially segregated. A dozen of its municipalities have African-American populations of less than 1%. Nine more municipalities have African-American populations of less than 2%. The principal indices of segregation show, remarkably, that Westchester was more segregated in 2000 than it was in 1950.
One should not be fooled into thinking that it is only poorer African-Americans who are living separately from whites. The most widely used measure of segregation has demonstrated that African-American households earning more than $150,000 per year are more segregated from whites than are African-American households earning less than $50,000 per year.
Recipients of federal community development funds have long been required to identify and act to overcome barriers to fair housing choice. Indeed, recipients can only receive grant funds if they represent that they have done so. From 2000 to 2006, Westchester received more than $50 million by making such representations. Earlier this year, a federal judge granted the Anti-Discrimination Center's motion for partial summary judgment, finding as a matter of law that Westchester had "utterly failed" to meet its affirmatively-furthering-fair-housing obligations, and finding as well that every one of Westchester's representations that it had done so was "false or fraudulent."
The only "social engineering" involved in the case was the evidence of Westchester County having perpetuated segregation by not using its authority to overcome artificial barriers to affordable housing development in its whitest municipalities while at the same time channeling such development into areas of concentrated African-American population.
The settlement is designed to overcome the rigid exclusionary zoning that has prevented both for-profit and not-for-profit developers from constructing the type of context-sensitive affordable housing in Westchester towns and villages that they have built elsewhere in the country. By creating these opportunities in communities where they have been absent, and by making it clear for the first time that people of all races and backgrounds are welcome throughout the county, the settlement both creates real consumer choice and, 41 years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, takes an important step toward ending the legacy of "two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal."
Craig Gurian, Executive Director
Anti-Discrimination Center
New York
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
More on the Westchester settlement
Excepts from the U.S. District Court decision granting partial summary judgment to the Anti-Discrimination Center and against Westchester County in the housing discrimination case; the decision was the precusor to the settlement announced yesterday
o The court found as a matter of law that the county "made a claim, to the United States government, that was false or fraudulent, seeking payment from the Federal treasury." [Decision, p. 54]
o Given the "explicit statutory and regulatory scheme, it is easy to find that federal law conditioned payment of the housing and community development funds on compliance with the duty to AFFH [this refers to a required certification by the county that a grant recipient is "affirmatively furthering fair housing"] and that each time the County submitted a request for payment of those funds it made an impliedly false certification." [Decision, p. 43] Note: over six years, "Approximately 25 payment vouchers per month were approved for payment." [Decision, p. 26]
o "No reasonable jury could conclude...that the County appropriately analyzed race in conducting its AIs or that it maintained the required report of that analysis." [Decision p. 34]
o "[T]he County's AIs [this refers to a required 'analysis of impediments to fair housing choice] during the false claims period utterly failed to comply with the regulatory requirement that the County perform and maintain a record of its analysis of the impediments to fair housing choice in terms of race. This failure is only compounded by the County's failure to follow the guidance provided by HUD." [Decision, p. 35]
o "The AFFH certification was not a mere boilerplate formality, but rather was a substantive requirement, rooted in the history and purpose of the fair housing laws and regulations, requiring the County to conduct an AI, take appropriate actions in response, and to document its analysis and actions. The County's motion for summary judgment is therefore denied" [Decision, pp. 50-51]
o "Westchester was aware of the racial makeup of its municipalities (as reflected in the relevant censuses) when it prepared its 2000 and 2004 analyses of impediments to fair housing. According to the 2000 census, over half of the municipalities in the Consortium had African-American populations of 3% or less." [Decision, p. 24]
o "As a matter of logic, providing more affordable housing for a low income racial minority will improve its housing stock but may do little to change any pattern of discrimination or segregation. Addressing that pattern would at a minimum necessitate an analysis of where the additional housing is placed." [Decision, p. 39]
o "The County admits that it did not undertake an analysis of whether the production of affordable housing between January 1, 1992 and April 1, 2006, had the effect of increasing or decreasing racial diversity in the neighborhood in which the housing was built."
o The regulation "requires an analysis of impediments to fair housing choice, not to affordable housing." [Decision, p. 21, n.5] The County knew this: "[T]he County had its own internal documents from before the false claims period relating to its AFFH obligations and the preparation of AIs. One such document, which is an outline of the County's Fair Housing Plan ("FHP"), sets forth the requirements that the County conduct an AI, setout actions to be taken, and maintain records. The end of the outline contains the following reminder: 'Remember: This [the FHP] is not a report on affordable housing, but FAIR HOUSING!!!'"
o "[T]he statutes and regulations require not just any AI, but one that analyzes impediments to fair housing that are related to race." [Decision, p. 31]
o As in the 2000-2004 AI, the 2004-2008 AI "makes no explicit reference to race, or race discrimination or segregation as an impediment to fair housing other than as described above. Race discrimination or segregation are not identified as one of the thirteen obstacles to fair housing." [Decision, p. 23]
o "A review of the 2000 and 2004 AIs demonstrates that they were conducted through the lens of affordable housing, rather than fair housing and its focus on protected classes such as race. Both AIs are devoted entirely to the lack of affordable housing in the County and related obstacles...Despite the regulatory obligation to maintain records reflecting the AI, there is simply no evidence that either of the County's AIs during the false claims period analyzed race-based impediments to fair housing within its jurisdiction." [Decision, pp. 31-32]
o "The focus of the AI is to be on 'actions, omissions or decisions' which 'restrict housing choices or the availability of housing choices,' or which have the effect of doing so, based on 'race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, or national origin,' including '[p]olicies, practices, or procedures that appear neutral on their face,' and HUD suggests that the AI contain a housing profile describing 'the degree of segregation and restricted housing by race, ethnicity, disability status, and families with children; [and] how segregation and restricted housing supply occurred. (Emphasis supplied). There is no dispute that the County's AIs did not contain this analysis of segregation and the housing supply." [Decision, pp. 34-35].
o "Without a targeted analysis of race as a potential impediment to fair housing, the County was unprepared to grapple with the second component of its AFFH duty to take appropriate action to overcome the effects of any racial discrimination or segregation it might identify as an impediment." [Decision, pp. 32-33]
o "On July 13, 2007, this Court denied the County's motion to dismiss, rejecting its contention that it had no legal obligation to consider race when it analyzed impediments to fair housing in connection with its certifications." [Decision, p. 2]
o "While the County argues that the actions it took to address the barriers to affordable housing should be considered actions promoting fair housing and specifically redressing racial discrimination in housing, for the reasons already described, the County cannot defeat this summary judgment motion with this post-hoc analysis. It was required to maintain records reflecting that analysis and those actions and it did not." [Decision, p. 39, n.9]
o "The County weakly asserts that the AIs were not devoid of any analysis of race because the references in the 2000 and 2004 AIs to an obstacle described as 'local opposition' or 'NIMBY' should be understood to include local opposition to new affordable housing on several bases, including on the basis of race. ADC disputes that the County used the term NIMBY to refer to a municipality's opposition to integration or to anything other than an individual homeowner's opposition to low-income housing being built in her neighborhood. Even assuming the County's contention to be true, however, such a veiled reference, buried within a finding that local opposition was an obstacle to affordable' housing, does not reflect any analysis of how race-based opposition impeded fair housing, as distinct from other forms of local opposition. Nor does this reference reflect an analysis of how race-based local opposition might be an impediment to fair, and not just affordable, housing." [Decision, p. 32]
o_The County's argument that it did not have to conclude after an analysis of data that there were race-based impediments to fair housing "might carry more weight if it took the position that neither discrimination nor segregation nor any other race-based factor was an impediment to fair housing during the false claims period. Tellingly, it does not assert that. Instead, its brief in opposition to the ADC's motion for summary judgment asserts that the information it received 'did not reflect that racial discrimination constituted a significant barrier to fair housing and that it did not find that 'any race-based impediments wereamong the most challenging barriers to fair housing.' (Emphasis supplied.) Moreover, even if grant recipients were excused from the obligation to take actions to overcome the effects of minor impediments to fair housing, the County was still obligated to record its analysis of race-based impediments and it has been unable to point to any record of a contemporaneous analysis, much less one that embodies the conclusions recited in its summary judgment memorandum. Without such a contemporaneous analysis and record, the certification that one existed was false. (Decision, pp. 33-34, n. 8]
o "When the County considers where to acquire land for affordable housing, it seeks the concurrence of the municipality where the land is situated, and during the false claims period the County would not acquire any such land without the municipality's agreement. The County produced no documentation showing that during the false claims period it funded or assisted the production of affordable housing in any municipality where the municipality opposed such production." [Decision, pp. 25-26]
o "The County set a goal in a 1993 Affordable Housing Allocation Plan to create 5000 affordable housing units; however, as of July 2005, at least 16 municipal units in the County had not created a single affordable housing unit." [Decision, p. 26]
o "Westchester entered into Cooperation Agreements with municipalities participating in the Consortium. The agreements pertained to, inter alia, CDBG grants, and provided that the County is prohibited from expending community development block grant funds for activities in or in support of any local government that does not affirmatively further fair housing within its jurisdiction or that impedes the County's action to comply with its fair housing certifications." [Decision, p. 6] Nevertheless, "the County has not withheld any funds or imposed any sanctions on any participating municipalities for failure to AFFH." [Decision, p. 25]
o The False Claims Act "is intended to police the integrity of those claims submitted to the government for payment, and the materiality of statements made in those claims is tested as of the time of submission to the government and in the context of the regulatory requirements. Thus, the assertion that certain HUD bureaucrats reviewed the County's submissions and continued to grant the County funding cannot somehow make the false AFFH certifications immaterial, where the funding was explicitly conditioned on the certifications." [Decision, p. 53]
To read the settlement agreement, and the background of the case and Judge Denise Cote's February decision, see the Anti-Discrimination Center of Metro New York's Web site, www.antibiaslaw.com
o The court found as a matter of law that the county "made a claim, to the United States government, that was false or fraudulent, seeking payment from the Federal treasury." [Decision, p. 54]
o Given the "explicit statutory and regulatory scheme, it is easy to find that federal law conditioned payment of the housing and community development funds on compliance with the duty to AFFH [this refers to a required certification by the county that a grant recipient is "affirmatively furthering fair housing"] and that each time the County submitted a request for payment of those funds it made an impliedly false certification." [Decision, p. 43] Note: over six years, "Approximately 25 payment vouchers per month were approved for payment." [Decision, p. 26]
o "No reasonable jury could conclude...that the County appropriately analyzed race in conducting its AIs or that it maintained the required report of that analysis." [Decision p. 34]
o "[T]he County's AIs [this refers to a required 'analysis of impediments to fair housing choice] during the false claims period utterly failed to comply with the regulatory requirement that the County perform and maintain a record of its analysis of the impediments to fair housing choice in terms of race. This failure is only compounded by the County's failure to follow the guidance provided by HUD." [Decision, p. 35]
o "The AFFH certification was not a mere boilerplate formality, but rather was a substantive requirement, rooted in the history and purpose of the fair housing laws and regulations, requiring the County to conduct an AI, take appropriate actions in response, and to document its analysis and actions. The County's motion for summary judgment is therefore denied" [Decision, pp. 50-51]
o "Westchester was aware of the racial makeup of its municipalities (as reflected in the relevant censuses) when it prepared its 2000 and 2004 analyses of impediments to fair housing. According to the 2000 census, over half of the municipalities in the Consortium had African-American populations of 3% or less." [Decision, p. 24]
o "As a matter of logic, providing more affordable housing for a low income racial minority will improve its housing stock but may do little to change any pattern of discrimination or segregation. Addressing that pattern would at a minimum necessitate an analysis of where the additional housing is placed." [Decision, p. 39]
o "The County admits that it did not undertake an analysis of whether the production of affordable housing between January 1, 1992 and April 1, 2006, had the effect of increasing or decreasing racial diversity in the neighborhood in which the housing was built."
o The regulation "requires an analysis of impediments to fair housing choice, not to affordable housing." [Decision, p. 21, n.5] The County knew this: "[T]he County had its own internal documents from before the false claims period relating to its AFFH obligations and the preparation of AIs. One such document, which is an outline of the County's Fair Housing Plan ("FHP"), sets forth the requirements that the County conduct an AI, setout actions to be taken, and maintain records. The end of the outline contains the following reminder: 'Remember: This [the FHP] is not a report on affordable housing, but FAIR HOUSING!!!'"
o "[T]he statutes and regulations require not just any AI, but one that analyzes impediments to fair housing that are related to race." [Decision, p. 31]
o As in the 2000-2004 AI, the 2004-2008 AI "makes no explicit reference to race, or race discrimination or segregation as an impediment to fair housing other than as described above. Race discrimination or segregation are not identified as one of the thirteen obstacles to fair housing." [Decision, p. 23]
o "A review of the 2000 and 2004 AIs demonstrates that they were conducted through the lens of affordable housing, rather than fair housing and its focus on protected classes such as race. Both AIs are devoted entirely to the lack of affordable housing in the County and related obstacles...Despite the regulatory obligation to maintain records reflecting the AI, there is simply no evidence that either of the County's AIs during the false claims period analyzed race-based impediments to fair housing within its jurisdiction." [Decision, pp. 31-32]
o "The focus of the AI is to be on 'actions, omissions or decisions' which 'restrict housing choices or the availability of housing choices,' or which have the effect of doing so, based on 'race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, or national origin,' including '[p]olicies, practices, or procedures that appear neutral on their face,' and HUD suggests that the AI contain a housing profile describing 'the degree of segregation and restricted housing by race, ethnicity, disability status, and families with children; [and] how segregation and restricted housing supply occurred. (Emphasis supplied). There is no dispute that the County's AIs did not contain this analysis of segregation and the housing supply." [Decision, pp. 34-35].
o "Without a targeted analysis of race as a potential impediment to fair housing, the County was unprepared to grapple with the second component of its AFFH duty to take appropriate action to overcome the effects of any racial discrimination or segregation it might identify as an impediment." [Decision, pp. 32-33]
o "On July 13, 2007, this Court denied the County's motion to dismiss, rejecting its contention that it had no legal obligation to consider race when it analyzed impediments to fair housing in connection with its certifications." [Decision, p. 2]
o "While the County argues that the actions it took to address the barriers to affordable housing should be considered actions promoting fair housing and specifically redressing racial discrimination in housing, for the reasons already described, the County cannot defeat this summary judgment motion with this post-hoc analysis. It was required to maintain records reflecting that analysis and those actions and it did not." [Decision, p. 39, n.9]
o "The County weakly asserts that the AIs were not devoid of any analysis of race because the references in the 2000 and 2004 AIs to an obstacle described as 'local opposition' or 'NIMBY' should be understood to include local opposition to new affordable housing on several bases, including on the basis of race. ADC disputes that the County used the term NIMBY to refer to a municipality's opposition to integration or to anything other than an individual homeowner's opposition to low-income housing being built in her neighborhood. Even assuming the County's contention to be true, however, such a veiled reference, buried within a finding that local opposition was an obstacle to affordable' housing, does not reflect any analysis of how race-based opposition impeded fair housing, as distinct from other forms of local opposition. Nor does this reference reflect an analysis of how race-based local opposition might be an impediment to fair, and not just affordable, housing." [Decision, p. 32]
o_The County's argument that it did not have to conclude after an analysis of data that there were race-based impediments to fair housing "might carry more weight if it took the position that neither discrimination nor segregation nor any other race-based factor was an impediment to fair housing during the false claims period. Tellingly, it does not assert that. Instead, its brief in opposition to the ADC's motion for summary judgment asserts that the information it received 'did not reflect that racial discrimination constituted a significant barrier to fair housing and that it did not find that 'any race-based impediments wereamong the most challenging barriers to fair housing.' (Emphasis supplied.) Moreover, even if grant recipients were excused from the obligation to take actions to overcome the effects of minor impediments to fair housing, the County was still obligated to record its analysis of race-based impediments and it has been unable to point to any record of a contemporaneous analysis, much less one that embodies the conclusions recited in its summary judgment memorandum. Without such a contemporaneous analysis and record, the certification that one existed was false. (Decision, pp. 33-34, n. 8]
o "When the County considers where to acquire land for affordable housing, it seeks the concurrence of the municipality where the land is situated, and during the false claims period the County would not acquire any such land without the municipality's agreement. The County produced no documentation showing that during the false claims period it funded or assisted the production of affordable housing in any municipality where the municipality opposed such production." [Decision, pp. 25-26]
o "The County set a goal in a 1993 Affordable Housing Allocation Plan to create 5000 affordable housing units; however, as of July 2005, at least 16 municipal units in the County had not created a single affordable housing unit." [Decision, p. 26]
o "Westchester entered into Cooperation Agreements with municipalities participating in the Consortium. The agreements pertained to, inter alia, CDBG grants, and provided that the County is prohibited from expending community development block grant funds for activities in or in support of any local government that does not affirmatively further fair housing within its jurisdiction or that impedes the County's action to comply with its fair housing certifications." [Decision, p. 6] Nevertheless, "the County has not withheld any funds or imposed any sanctions on any participating municipalities for failure to AFFH." [Decision, p. 25]
o The False Claims Act "is intended to police the integrity of those claims submitted to the government for payment, and the materiality of statements made in those claims is tested as of the time of submission to the government and in the context of the regulatory requirements. Thus, the assertion that certain HUD bureaucrats reviewed the County's submissions and continued to grant the County funding cannot somehow make the false AFFH certifications immaterial, where the funding was explicitly conditioned on the certifications." [Decision, p. 53]
To read the settlement agreement, and the background of the case and Judge Denise Cote's February decision, see the Anti-Discrimination Center of Metro New York's Web site, www.antibiaslaw.com
Fair Housing Comes to Suburbs - NY Times
New York Times Editorial August 11, 2009
Fair Housing in the Suburbs
When one thinks about segregation, the suburbs of New York’s Westchester County don’t immediately come to mind. Unless, of course, you’re a minority resident searching in vain for an affordable place to live.
Westchester County has now announced an agreement to spend more than $50 million to build or acquire 750 affordable housing units — 630 in towns and villages where the black population is 3 percent or less, and the Latino population is less than 7 percent.
The agreement, which needs to be ratified by the county Board of Legislators, settles a 3-year-old federal lawsuit, filed by the Anti-Discrimination Center, accusing the county of taking tens of millions of dollars in federal housing grants while falsely certifying that it was living up to its legal requirement to provide affordable housing without reinforcing racial segregation.
At the time, the county called those accusations “garbage,” and said it was powerless to force communities to integrate. But in February, Judge Denise L. Cote ruled that between 2000 and 2006 the county had, indeed, misrepresented its actions and had made little or no effort to place affordable homes in overwhelmingly white communities where residents objected.
Those objections have been fierce. And we fear the battles are far from over. In the 1980s, Yonkers nearly bankrupted itself trying to fight a federal judge’s order to integrate public housing. There are currently 120,000 acres of land in Westchester where integration is lagging, including in Bedford, Bronxville, Eastchester, Hastings-on-Hudson, Harrison, Larchmont, Mamaroneck, New Castle, Pelham Manor and Scarsdale.
Westchester County officials insist that they have invested a lot of money and effort to identify potential affordable-housing sites and invite communities to do the right thing. But toothless plans setting community-by-community targets clearly will not be enough. With federal help and forceful oversight, the county must use all appropriate power, including lawsuits if necessary, to make sure that its communities work to solve a problem that has been too long ignored and resisted.
Fair Housing in the Suburbs
When one thinks about segregation, the suburbs of New York’s Westchester County don’t immediately come to mind. Unless, of course, you’re a minority resident searching in vain for an affordable place to live.
Westchester County has now announced an agreement to spend more than $50 million to build or acquire 750 affordable housing units — 630 in towns and villages where the black population is 3 percent or less, and the Latino population is less than 7 percent.
The agreement, which needs to be ratified by the county Board of Legislators, settles a 3-year-old federal lawsuit, filed by the Anti-Discrimination Center, accusing the county of taking tens of millions of dollars in federal housing grants while falsely certifying that it was living up to its legal requirement to provide affordable housing without reinforcing racial segregation.
At the time, the county called those accusations “garbage,” and said it was powerless to force communities to integrate. But in February, Judge Denise L. Cote ruled that between 2000 and 2006 the county had, indeed, misrepresented its actions and had made little or no effort to place affordable homes in overwhelmingly white communities where residents objected.
Those objections have been fierce. And we fear the battles are far from over. In the 1980s, Yonkers nearly bankrupted itself trying to fight a federal judge’s order to integrate public housing. There are currently 120,000 acres of land in Westchester where integration is lagging, including in Bedford, Bronxville, Eastchester, Hastings-on-Hudson, Harrison, Larchmont, Mamaroneck, New Castle, Pelham Manor and Scarsdale.
Westchester County officials insist that they have invested a lot of money and effort to identify potential affordable-housing sites and invite communities to do the right thing. But toothless plans setting community-by-community targets clearly will not be enough. With federal help and forceful oversight, the county must use all appropriate power, including lawsuits if necessary, to make sure that its communities work to solve a problem that has been too long ignored and resisted.
$65 million settlement in NY housing discrim case
Westchester Adds Housing to Desegregation Pact
By SAM ROBERTS
NY Times - August 11, 2009
Westchester County entered into a landmark desegregation agreement on Monday that would compel it to create hundreds of houses and apartments for moderate-income people in overwhelmingly white communities and aggressively market them to nonwhites in Westchester and New York City.
The agreement, if ratified by the county’s Board of Legislators, would settle a lawsuit filed by an antidiscrimination group and could become a template for increased scrutiny of local governments’ housing policies by the Obama administration.
“This is consistent with the president’s desire to see a fully integrated society,” said Ron Sims, the deputy secretary of housing and urban development, which helped broker the settlement along with the Justice Department. “Until now, we tended to lay dormant. This is historic, because we are going to hold people’s feet to the fire.”
The agreement calls for the county to spend more than $50 million of its own money, in addition to other funds, to build or acquire 750 homes or apartments, 630 of which must be provided in towns and villages where black residents constitute 3 percent or less of the population and Hispanic residents make up less than 7 percent. The 120 other spaces must meet different criteria for cost and ethnic concentration.
The county, one of the nation’s wealthiest suburbs, has seven years to complete the construction or acquisition of the affordable housing.
Affordable housing is defined by a complex formula, but generally it is meant to help working families keep from spending more than a third of their gross income on housing. A family of four could make up to $53,000 as a tenant and up to $75,000 as an owner and still qualify.
There is no minimum income level, “but it’s not going to be no-income,” said Craig Gurian, executive director of the Anti-Discrimination Center, which filed the lawsuit. “This agreement is not focused on facilitating housing for the poorest of the poor.” The center is a nonprofit anti-bias advocacy and litigation group based in New York City.
Mr. Gurian said that while black and Hispanic residents have a disproportionate need for affordable housing, “this is an opportunity-creating agreement, not a guarantee” that the homes would go to minority members.
“Residential segregation underlies virtually every racial disparity in America, from education to jobs to the delivery of health care,” said Mr. Gurian.
No communities have been chosen to receive the homes, officials said. But according to the Anti-Discrimination Center, more than two dozen predominantly white towns or villages are eligible, including Bedford, Bronxville, Eastchester, Hastings-on-Hudson, Harrison, Larchmont, Mamaroneck, New Castle, Pelham Manor, Rye and Scarsdale.
A federal monitor, James E. Johnson, has been appointed to ensure that the county abides by the settlement. Given that 120,000 acres in the county meet the criteria, the monitor “should have no difficulty making sure that Westchester ends its policy of allowing affordable housing to be off-limits in the most highly white neighborhoods in the county,” Mr. Gurian said.
The lawsuit, filed under the federal False Claims Act, argued that when Westchester applied for federal Community Development Block Grants for affordable housing and other projects, county officials treated part of the application as boilerplate — lying when they claimed to have complied with mandates to encourage fair housing.
A Westchester official originally dismissed the suit as “garbage.” But the county was largely repudiated in February when Judge Denise L. Cote ruled in Federal District Court that between 2000 and 2006 it had misrepresented its efforts to desegregate overwhelmingly white communities when it applied for the federal housing funds.
Judge Cote concluded that Westchester had made little or no effort to find out where low-income housing was being placed, or to finance homes and apartments in communities that opposed affordable housing.
As part of Monday’s agreement, the county admitted that it has the authority to challenge zoning rules in villages and towns that in many cases implicitly discourage affordable housing by setting minimum lot sizes, discouraging higher-density developments or appropriating vacant property for other purposes. Westchester agreed to “take legal action to compel compliance if municipalities hinder or impede the county” in complying with the agreement.
It was unclear Monday to what extent localities could thwart the agreement, if any chose to do so. Mary Beth Murphy, the town supervisor of Somers, which is among the possible locales for new housing, said that while she was unaware of the agreement, “we certainly are committed to affordable housing and have amended our zoning legislation in recent years to create more opportunities.”
The agreement could spark challenges to suburban county governments across the country that have resisted pressure to undo decades of residential segregation.
Andrew J. Spano, the Westchester County executive, attributed the settlement to “a historic shift of philosophy” by federal housing officials. He said he had signed the agreement to avoid further litigation and possible penalties.
The county admitted no wrongdoing, attributed the judge’s ruling to a technicality and argued that since it had previously invested in affordable housing, “what is different is the locations where the housing must be built.”
“We are settling the lawsuit because we have no choice,” Mr. Spano said.
The suit by the Anti-Discrimination Center applied to towns and villages in Westchester. The federal government deals directly with the county’s larger cities, among them Yonkers, which nearly went bankrupt before capitulating in a housing segregation case that began in 1980 and dragged on for years. That city, which had concentrated public housing in its southwest, was forced to build on the east side, where more whites lived.
The agreement is subject to approval within 45 days by the county’s Board of Legislators, which is also required to approve a $32.9 million bond sale to help finance the housing. Without legislative approval, the litigation would resume and the county would be faced with having to prove at trial that it did not knowingly file false claims.
Most of the homes would be new construction, although some existing houses and apartments could qualify if the county made them permanently affordable.
The case was litigated by Mr. Gurian and the center’s lawyer, John Relman, and supported by testimony from Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College of the City University of New York.
Dr. Beveridge found that “racial isolation is increasing for blacks, falling slightly for whites” and that “income level has very little impact on the degree of residential racial segregation experienced by African-Americans.”
Mr. Gurian said that the 750 homes called for by the agreement “represents only a small percentage of need,” but that “it’s designed to be practical.”
By SAM ROBERTS
NY Times - August 11, 2009
Westchester County entered into a landmark desegregation agreement on Monday that would compel it to create hundreds of houses and apartments for moderate-income people in overwhelmingly white communities and aggressively market them to nonwhites in Westchester and New York City.
The agreement, if ratified by the county’s Board of Legislators, would settle a lawsuit filed by an antidiscrimination group and could become a template for increased scrutiny of local governments’ housing policies by the Obama administration.
“This is consistent with the president’s desire to see a fully integrated society,” said Ron Sims, the deputy secretary of housing and urban development, which helped broker the settlement along with the Justice Department. “Until now, we tended to lay dormant. This is historic, because we are going to hold people’s feet to the fire.”
The agreement calls for the county to spend more than $50 million of its own money, in addition to other funds, to build or acquire 750 homes or apartments, 630 of which must be provided in towns and villages where black residents constitute 3 percent or less of the population and Hispanic residents make up less than 7 percent. The 120 other spaces must meet different criteria for cost and ethnic concentration.
The county, one of the nation’s wealthiest suburbs, has seven years to complete the construction or acquisition of the affordable housing.
Affordable housing is defined by a complex formula, but generally it is meant to help working families keep from spending more than a third of their gross income on housing. A family of four could make up to $53,000 as a tenant and up to $75,000 as an owner and still qualify.
There is no minimum income level, “but it’s not going to be no-income,” said Craig Gurian, executive director of the Anti-Discrimination Center, which filed the lawsuit. “This agreement is not focused on facilitating housing for the poorest of the poor.” The center is a nonprofit anti-bias advocacy and litigation group based in New York City.
Mr. Gurian said that while black and Hispanic residents have a disproportionate need for affordable housing, “this is an opportunity-creating agreement, not a guarantee” that the homes would go to minority members.
“Residential segregation underlies virtually every racial disparity in America, from education to jobs to the delivery of health care,” said Mr. Gurian.
No communities have been chosen to receive the homes, officials said. But according to the Anti-Discrimination Center, more than two dozen predominantly white towns or villages are eligible, including Bedford, Bronxville, Eastchester, Hastings-on-Hudson, Harrison, Larchmont, Mamaroneck, New Castle, Pelham Manor, Rye and Scarsdale.
A federal monitor, James E. Johnson, has been appointed to ensure that the county abides by the settlement. Given that 120,000 acres in the county meet the criteria, the monitor “should have no difficulty making sure that Westchester ends its policy of allowing affordable housing to be off-limits in the most highly white neighborhoods in the county,” Mr. Gurian said.
The lawsuit, filed under the federal False Claims Act, argued that when Westchester applied for federal Community Development Block Grants for affordable housing and other projects, county officials treated part of the application as boilerplate — lying when they claimed to have complied with mandates to encourage fair housing.
A Westchester official originally dismissed the suit as “garbage.” But the county was largely repudiated in February when Judge Denise L. Cote ruled in Federal District Court that between 2000 and 2006 it had misrepresented its efforts to desegregate overwhelmingly white communities when it applied for the federal housing funds.
Judge Cote concluded that Westchester had made little or no effort to find out where low-income housing was being placed, or to finance homes and apartments in communities that opposed affordable housing.
As part of Monday’s agreement, the county admitted that it has the authority to challenge zoning rules in villages and towns that in many cases implicitly discourage affordable housing by setting minimum lot sizes, discouraging higher-density developments or appropriating vacant property for other purposes. Westchester agreed to “take legal action to compel compliance if municipalities hinder or impede the county” in complying with the agreement.
It was unclear Monday to what extent localities could thwart the agreement, if any chose to do so. Mary Beth Murphy, the town supervisor of Somers, which is among the possible locales for new housing, said that while she was unaware of the agreement, “we certainly are committed to affordable housing and have amended our zoning legislation in recent years to create more opportunities.”
The agreement could spark challenges to suburban county governments across the country that have resisted pressure to undo decades of residential segregation.
Andrew J. Spano, the Westchester County executive, attributed the settlement to “a historic shift of philosophy” by federal housing officials. He said he had signed the agreement to avoid further litigation and possible penalties.
The county admitted no wrongdoing, attributed the judge’s ruling to a technicality and argued that since it had previously invested in affordable housing, “what is different is the locations where the housing must be built.”
“We are settling the lawsuit because we have no choice,” Mr. Spano said.
The suit by the Anti-Discrimination Center applied to towns and villages in Westchester. The federal government deals directly with the county’s larger cities, among them Yonkers, which nearly went bankrupt before capitulating in a housing segregation case that began in 1980 and dragged on for years. That city, which had concentrated public housing in its southwest, was forced to build on the east side, where more whites lived.
The agreement is subject to approval within 45 days by the county’s Board of Legislators, which is also required to approve a $32.9 million bond sale to help finance the housing. Without legislative approval, the litigation would resume and the county would be faced with having to prove at trial that it did not knowingly file false claims.
Most of the homes would be new construction, although some existing houses and apartments could qualify if the county made them permanently affordable.
The case was litigated by Mr. Gurian and the center’s lawyer, John Relman, and supported by testimony from Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College of the City University of New York.
Dr. Beveridge found that “racial isolation is increasing for blacks, falling slightly for whites” and that “income level has very little impact on the degree of residential racial segregation experienced by African-Americans.”
Mr. Gurian said that the 750 homes called for by the agreement “represents only a small percentage of need,” but that “it’s designed to be practical.”
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