Affordable Housing Institute : US

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1].

 

Yesterday we delved into Westchester County’s recent settlement, as reported in the New York Times, of a desegregation lawsuit.  Via a clever legal end run, it was brought against the county by the Anti-Discrimination Center, using the False Claims Act:

 

The case was litigated by Mr. Gurian and the center’s lawyer, John Relman. Their argument that the county had largely ignored local impediments to affordable housing –

 

Ever since Lyndon Johnson, it has been the Federal government’s thesis that since overt racial discrimination is illegal (under Brown v. Board of Education as well as numerous Equal Opportunity statutes), communities seeking to exclude minorities adopt camouflage, usually in the form of exclusionary zoning.  The Federal government has therefore made embrace of affordable housing the talisman of anti-discrimination, and has bestowed or withheld Federal funding based on cities’ and towns’ affirmative declaration that they are taking housing-affordability steps.  As Charles M. Lamb put it in Housing Segregation in Suburban America since 1960:

 

 

[Under George Romney], housing desegregation became a primary concern in the allocation of all HUD financial assistance, regardless of the specific program. By virtue of HUD’s interest in housing desegregation, Breakthrough soon came to represent more than a large-scale attempt to build low-cost housing; it was used to help spearhead desegregation.  

 

In Romney’s mind, suburban housing integration would also partly solve the thorny problems of segregated schools and minority unemployment. 

 

In return, not only would local governments receive low-income housing, but they would be given highest priority when applying for other forms of HUD assistance. If this carrot proved inadequate to implement Breakthrough, Romney threatened to rely on the stick as well, cutting or even revoking HUD assistance to communities refusing to cooperate.   Pages 63-64.

Remaking America: George Romney

 

Ever since Romney, localities that fail to adopt and implement anti-discriminatory policies can be denied Federal assistance, a requirement that had until recently become largely a rote affidavit, merely another of a long list of affirmations and declarations to be signed without thinking, and filed without reviewing.

 

Until, that is, the energetic lawyers opened up a False Claims suit and sought to show that Westchester’s deeds failed to match its words:

 

– was based, in part, on testimony by Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College of the City University of New York.  

 

Beveridge’s graphic: blacks in tiny pockets

 

Judging by his CV, Dr. Beveridge specializes in these judicial expert-witness situations, which by itself is no disqualification, although it suggests he brings a perspective as well as extensive experience. 

 

Separating racial discrimination from economic: Beveridge

 

[His complete report is here, in .pdf, downloadable but not extractable, which is annoying since I'll have to retype the relevant quotes.]

 

[Many pages of statistical correlations, leading to the following.] 

 

Racial segregation levels are higher than segregation by income.

 

Forty years after Operation Breakthrough, the question remains: is visible socioeconomic segregation racist, or merely elitist? 

 

Racial discrimination, or economic?

Westchester County house values

 

When the affluent households are mapped (see Exhibit H), one can plainly see that there is substantial overlap between areas that have a high concentration of blacks in general, and those that have a high concentration of affluent blacks in particular. 

 

I can’t electronically extract Exhibit H, which is on page 45, but you can compare it with this page, also from his report:

 

Affluent blacks live in neighborhoods more black than affuent

 

This means that many affluent blacks in Westchester County share their neighborhoods with those who are much less well off than they.  (Sections 36-37, page 11)

 

That’s strong correlative evidence, and it won over the judge:

 

But the county’s claims were largely repudiated in February when Judge Denise L. Cote ruled that between 2000 and 2006 the county had misrepresented its efforts to desegregate overwhelmingly white communities when it applied for federal housing funds.

 

Don’t mess with this judge

 

The judge’s finding of county misrepresentation was based on ironclad logic:

 

Judge Cote concluded that Westchester 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.

 

In other words, Westchester County had claimed it was actively seeking to desegregate its communities.  Yet Westchester County had failed either to build affordable housing in places with few blacks, or to find out if the market was building such housing on its own.  That’s excellent evidence of bad faith, or at the very least, total indifference.

 

Andrew Spano, the Westchester County executive, attributed the settlement” to “a historic shift of philosophy” by federal housing officials.  

 

“The Feds moved on us”: Andrew Spano

 

Mr. Spano said that the settlement would have “a sweeping effect on communities nationwide” and that he signed the agreement to avoid further litigation and possible penalties.

 

The county … said that since it had previously invested in affordable housing, “what is different is the locations where the housing must be built.”

 

The overarching goal, though, is to locate them in the least racially integrated neighborhoods.

 

It was at about this point in the Times article that I realized New York must lack an essential tool that Massachusetts has:

 

Not another failure?

 

New York needs a powerful inclusionary-zoning law like Massachusetts’ Chapter 40B. 

 

 

As I’ve posted before, Chapter 40B enables states to compel injection of affordable housing into recalcitrant localities, because it uses the override power of a higher unit of government (the state) to nullify the exclusionary restrictions promulgated by a lower unit (the town or village).

 

It has only just dawned on me that Chapter 40B works for the same reason the False Claims Act does – it privatizes enforcement by giving private actors a financial motivation to enforce.  Chapter 40B does for affordable housing development what the False Claims Act does for desegregation.  As shown by this map, 40B works – it builds properties in suburban cities and towns:

 

Notice now many suburbs have 40B properties

 

Meanwhile, in thirty-plus years of affordable housing here in Massachusetts, I’ve never heard of False-Claims litigation anything like Westchester’s.  Maybe 40B is acting like a vaccination, because any state with 40B or a similar inclusionary zoning statute will never be allowed to zone out of its domains.

 

Back in New York, will the judicial lever work?  Or will the plaintiffs’ victory be as hollow as that of the massive tobacco-litigation settlement, where the government gave the tobacco companies a quarter-century free run, in exchange for a share of the proceeds? 

 

Westchester’s got seven years to create a handful of affordable apartments.  We know the money’s totally inadequate to do this, which means either micro-sized apartments or more money must be found. 

 

Federal housing officials would appoint a monitor to ensure compliance.

 

It’s still a seven-year window, and by the time it’s over, we’ll have a new Administration.

 

Even if the agreement is enthusiastically fulfilled in every particular, Westchester will be moving only a tiny number of poorer people into whiter neighborhoods.  Will that make those neighborhoods blacker?

 

See any anti-black policies here?

 

Or will Westchester’s domestic workers just being moving out of outlaw in-law apartments?

 

Given that 120,000 acres of land in the county meet the criteria, Mr. Gurian said, the federal 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.”

 

What makes this a conundrum is that, after four decades of using affordable housing to segregate racially, we still don’t know if people are anti-black or anti-green.

 

How can we line up the incomes with the house prices?

 

“Affordable” housing is defined by a complex formula, but generally it is meant for working families. In some cases, a family of four could make up to $90,000 and still qualify.

 

That’s workforce housing, and there’s neither a guarantee nor even a legitimate mandate to ensure those ‘poor’ families are black.  

 

Or the unaffordable rents?

 

There is no minimum income level, “but it’s not going to be no-income,” Mr. Gurian said. “This agreement is not focused on facilitating housing for the poorest of the poor.”

 

Is Westchester County anti-black?  Or just anti-green?

 

The only minority we don’t like is the no-green group

 

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 members of minority groups.

 

Thus even if Westchester had done everything the False Claims litigation asserted Westchester did not, the county might still be just as segregated:

 

The county admitted no wrongdoing, blamed the judge’s ruling on a technicality, [and] said it had always given made affordable housing a priority.

 

Anti-black policies?  Or just anti-no-green?

 

We welcome anyone … with money!

 

Most of the homes would be new construction, although some existing houses and apartments could qualify if the county made them permanently affordable.

 

(Watch the county start discovering and granting quiet amnesty to in-law apartments being used for domestic workers, then counting them as affordable under the settlement formula.)

 

What does the Anti-Discrimination League’s expert say?

 

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.”

 

If that’s so, then how will affordable housing solve it?

 

How will we encounter it?

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