Planned Affordable Housing Project in Brooklyn Shut Down as Discriminatory
A bitter minority² vs. minority battle (temporarily anyway) ended earlier this week when a NY judge granted a preliminary injunction against the construction of an affordable housing project on 31-acres of city-owned land in Brooklyn.
The planned Broadway Triangle affordable housing project was designed to be full of multi-room apartments in buildings no higher than eight stories – perfect for chasidic families with many children, who can’t use an elevator on Shabbat or holidays.
Plaintiffs in the case claim the project is discriminatory by design, meant to favor Orthodox applicants, though the area is heavily black and Latino. As a result, plaintiffs claim, the planned project is a violation of the Fair Housing Act, Equal Protection Clause and state and city human rights laws.
“There can be no compliance with the Fair Housing Act where defendants never analyzed the impact of the community preference,” Goodman wrote in her decision last month, which became public last week. . . .
A demographic analyst working for the plaintiffs . . . Lance Freeman of Columbia University, testified that in the districts qualifying for the project, 90,000 blacks and Hispanics needed small apartments, compared with only 9,000 whites and/or Yiddish speakers who needed large apartments, the New York Times reported. That made the focus on large apartments out of character with the area, plaintiffs said. . . .
The city and the defendants are debating whether to appeal the ruling or to allow the case to go to trial, said David Pollock, associate executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, citing conversations with those involved.
I find this stuff fascinating (fair housing cases, not discrimination)… I’m not informed enough to have an opinion on this yet, but I will say that it’s sad to see minorities fighting each other rather than working together.
You can read more about the case at here.
Also, FYI — I get great policy articles (like this one) in my inbox from the National Institute for Latino Policy. You can join the NiLP Network here.