Anti-Discrimination Center

Agency still not responding to the fact that Westchester doesn't only have the obligations of any recipient of federal housing funding, but has unique court-ordered obligations that it has continued to violate for more than three years.

A new report by the Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC) credits the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for "reaffirming a broad commitment to fair housing," but notes that the task of reforming HUD's own programs has been "painstakingly slow" during President Obama's first term.

Part 2 of ProPublica's series on "affirmatively furthering fair housing." This article focuses on the failure of the Government and the Monitor to hold Westchester to its obligations under the historic housing desegregation Consent Decree entered by U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote in August, 2009.

Part 1 of ProPublica's series on the Government's decades-long failure to enforce the "affirmatively furthering fair housing" mandate.

Westchester County Executive's rhetoric hits new low with crude appeal to fear.

Yes it does, but three years after the entry of the Consent Decree no such Implementation Plan exists.

New motion highlights one aspect of Westchester's contempt and acknowledges that continuation of County's course of conduct "will make it all but impossible to achieve the results contemplated" by the Consent Decree. But the Government still fails to ask the Court to remedy Westchester's three-year failure to take action against the exclusionary zoning that pervades the County.

A recent New York Times editorial accurately described Westchester's ongoing resistance to integrated housing as constituting "the battle for Westchester." But, two years and nine months after the entry of the consent decree, the federal government has yet to engage seriously in that battle.

Anyone reading the decision will see that the County Executive's spin is inaccurate and misleading; what people may not realize at first is that the ruling makes all too clear the fact that the Government and the Monitor hadn't even demanded that Westchester be made to do very much.

Pretense of "progress" still being clung to despite fact that the units to be built do not affirmatively further fair housing (AFFH). Review fails to articulate plainly that County has rejected every major premise and violated every major obligation of Decree. Monitor reveals he is prepared to accept Implementation Plan not designed to AFFH. Along with HUD and U.S. Attorney, Monitor fails to assess Westchester's refusal to meet Decree-ordered obligations of using all housing policies and programs to end segregation. All ignore that evidence is already in on presence of extensive exclusionary zoning and on fact that Westchester has failed to meet its obligation to combat that critical barrier to expanding fair housing choice.

ADC is most disappointed by the Court's failure to exercise its authority to vindicate its own interest in seeing that its order is obeyed.

In a Nov. 29, 2011 letter to the Monitor, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, and the National Fair Housing Alliance note that, "It is now 27 months after the entry of the Decree, and there has not been any material progress or compliance." The civil rights groups express their concern about the "failure of the Monitor and the Government to fully implement all the terms and objectives of the Decree, despite ample authority to do so," and call on the Monitor "to reverse [his] earlier opposition to the Motion to Intervene filed by the Anti-Discrimination Center (the organization that litigated the matter in the first place) to ensure the presence of a party that will seek vigorous enforcement of the Consent Decree."

The Monitor has correctly found that the County has been violating its obligation to promote legislation to prohibit discrimination based on lawful source of income and correctly noted that the County's course of conduct "raises the possibility of a contempt citation and the imposition of fines."

The Monitor has also correctly pointed out that the Consent Decree gives the Government the right to seek specific performance of the County's ongoing Decree obligations by a further order of the Court enforceable by contempt citation (a power that the Government has thus far refused to use).

Unfortunately, neither the Monitor nor the Government has yet recognized the reality that what is at issue is Westchester's fundamental rejection of the goals, premises, and chosen tools of the Decree, not some operational hiccup in an otherwise functioning implementation process. From the moment it signed the Decree, Westchester's aims have been to avoid development and other actions that would overcome barriers to fair housing choice, to avoid placing new housing on census blocks populated by high percentages of White residents, and, above all, to ignore its Consent Decree obligation to eliminate residential segregation throughout the County.

As the Westchester Journal News explained in its editorial: "In both deed and stubborn word, Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino has made plain that he has no plans to honor key provisions of the False Claims Act/fair housing settlement...The sooner HUD, the monitor and, ultimately, the U.S. District Court hold him accountable, the better for Westchester and fair-housing choice throughout the county."