NY Times Editorial on NY Housing Discrimination Case

Westchester’s Word
NY Times - 2/17/10

Six months ago, New York’s Westchester County agreed to spend slightly more than $50 million in the next seven years to build at least 750 units of affordable housing — more than 600 of them in towns and villages where the black population is 3 percent or less and the Hispanic population is less than 7 percent.

It signed the deal to settle a federal lawsuit accusing it of violating the False Claims Act — that is, of taking tens of millions of federal dollars for affordable housing and other projects while falsely certifying that it was doing all that it must to promote integrated housing. It signed only after a federal judge declared that Westchester had ”utterly failed” to meet its obligations.

Last week, the monitor overseeing the settlement rejected the county’s affordable-housing plan, saying it was deficient on details, accountability and enforcement. Instead of specifying what the county would do to meet certain desegregation bench marks, Westchester had simply restated the bench marks. The plan didn’t specify where and how the money would be spent. It had no “concrete time frame” for finding and buying properties to develop and was “unnecessarily vague on the whole.”

Worst of all, the plan did not explain how or even whether it would overcome not-in-my-backyard resistance and compel cooperation by municipalities that have used exclusionary zoning laws and other devices for years to keep out lower-income people and minorities. The monitor also said the plan needed “real enforcement mechanisms” — “a clear strategy for how the county will employ carrots and sticks to encourage compliance by municipal governments.” We await the county’s response, which should be to fix the plan and then seriously and swiftly put it into action.

When one thinks about segregation, Westchester isn’t the first place that comes to mind. But the poor and minority residents desperately looking for an affordable place to live know the bitter truth. It is past time for Westchester’s leaders to do what they’ve promised.