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Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge on Housing Segregation in Westchester Case

FRIDAY, MAY 13, 2016

Update: The Journal News covers the case and Beveridge's expert report in "Westchester still segregated despite lawsuit, group says."

Remedies suggested by the Anti-Discrimination Center include contempt of court and extending the length of the settlement implementation for another seven years.

 
Original Post: The Anti-Discrimination Center filed a report today on the continued housing discrimination in Westchester County. Social Explorer's Andrew Beveridge conducted an analysis and created maps for the report illustrating that "exclusionary zoning is still rampant." Full details in the press release and links below:
 
For immediate release
Contact: Craig Gurian, 212-537-5824, x5

ADC court filing shows massive exclusionary zoning in Westchester 

Government and Court Monitor fail to enforce historic housing desegregation consent decree

May 12, 2016 — A leading national demographic expert has just submitted a report to a Southern District Court Judge that shows that 19 towns and villages in Westchester have exclusionary zoning that violates the Fair Housing Act rights of African-Americans.  The report, available here, says that a court-appointed monitor failed to do a proper analysis of exclusionary zoning and thus "dramatically understated the extent to which exclusionary zoning in Westchester … contributes to the perpetuation of segregation."

Seven years after the entry of the court order, Andrew Beveridge, Chair of the Sociology Department at Queens College, writes that "exclusionary zoning is still rampant" in Westchester and that "very little, if anything, has changed with respect to the degree of segregation” in respect to the 25 municipalities in Westchester with African-American population of under 3.0 percent (19 of which have African-American population under 2.0 percent).  

Take a look at this map that shows dramatically the remarkable restrictions on as-of-right multi-family housing in principally residential zones of the under-3-percent-African-American” municipalities is attached.  The principally residential zones where multi-family housing is NOT allowed as-of-right are shown in yellow; the principally residential zones where multi-family housing IS permitted to be built as-of-right are shown in red.  The comparison isn’t close.

In a letter from Anti-Discrimination Center (ADC), the organization that brought the lawsuit against Westchester in the first place, ADC’s executive director, Craig Gurian, told the court that the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Monitor have failed to force Westchester to comply with the consent decree in a meaningful way and are allowing the country to get off easy by allowing units to be improperly counted, including many being allowed to be built in isolated or otherwise undesirable parts of localities.  You can see the list for yourself.

The amicus submission by ADC was made in advance of a court hearing for Westchester, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the Monitor that was already on the calendar for May 23rd.

“It was not unexpected that Westchester would resist its obligations under the court order – civil rights defendants do that all the time,” said Craig Gurian, ADC’s executive director.  “But the failure on the part of the Government and the Monitor? He added. "This is the civil rights version of going easy on the banks after the financial collapse. The case is there, but the political will is not."  

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