Full opinion text
OPINION SAND, District Judge. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION HOUSING: I. BACKGROUND .........................................................1289 II. STATEMENT OF CLAIMS AND LEGAL STANDARDS ..................1291 III. THE CITY’S EARLY ACTIVITIES UNDER THE NATIONAL HOUSING ACT OF 1949 .......................................................... 1294 A. The Procedure for the Selection and Approval of Sites for Public Housing .................................................................1294 B. Site Selection for the City’s 1949 Allocation of Public Housing Units .. 1295 C. Site Selection for Senior Citizen Housing .............................1300 D. The City’s Campaign to Produce Sites for Relocation Housing ........1302 E. The Nature and Effect of the Recurring Pattern of Public Opposition . 1306 IV. THE RIVERVIEW PERIOD .............................................1313 A. Overview of Projects Approved ......................................1313 B. The Continuing Opposition to Subsidized Housing in the City’s Heavily White Neighborhoods ................................................1314 C. The Pattern of Opposition and Apparent Acquiescence ................1316 1. The City’s Campaign to Produce Privately Sponsored Projects .....1316 2. The Candeub & Fleissig Survey and the City’s 1970 Memorandum of Understanding with the UDC .................................1317 3. The Glenwood/Ridge Avenue Project and Rockledge Heights ......1320 4. Seven Pines .....................................................1322 5. Parkledge .......................................................1323 D. The City’s Explanations for its Confinement of Subsidized Housing to the Southwest ......................................................1327 1. Reliance on HUD’s Express Directions ...........................1328 2. The Absence of Private Developer Proposals In the East .........1330 3. Support for the Projects Among the Minority Community .........1331 4. The Unsuitability of East Side Sites ..............................1333 5. The Pursuit of a Legitimate Planning Strategy to Use Subsidized Housing to Rebuild the Southwest ...............................1337 V. THE CITY’S ACTIVITIES UNDER THE HOUSING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT ACT OF 1974 .......................................... 1342 A. Subsidized Housing Under the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 ......................................................... 1342 B. The Section 8 Existing Program .....................................1342 C. Section 8 New Construction Housing for Senior Citizens ..............1348 1. The City’s Actions ...............................................1348 2. The Effect of the City’s Actions .................................1351 D. Subsidized Housing for Families Under the HAPs for Years I through IV ..................................................................1352 E. The Palmer Road Site ...............................................1353 F. Actions Subsequent to the 1980 Contract Conditions ..................1356 1. Salisbury Gardens ...............................................1356 2. The Neustadter Site .............................................1358 3. School 4 ........................................................1358 VI. THE EFFECT OF THE CITY’S ACTIONS ON THE RACIAL CONFIGURATION OF YONKERS ................. 1358 VII. CONCLUSIONS OF LAW ...............................................1369 SCHOOLS: I. THE CLAIMS OF UNLAWFUL SCHOOL SEGREGATION ................1376 II. LEGAL STANDARDS ...................................................1378 III. THE YONKERS PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM .............................1382 IV. THE BOARD OF EDUCATION ..........................................1388 A. School Openings, Closings, and Attendance Zone Changes .............1388 1. Introduction .....................................................1388 2. School Openings .................................................1395 a. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School . .................1395 b. School 10 ...................................................1403 c. Commerce Middle School ....................................1410 3. School Closings ..................................................1410 a. School 1 ....................................................1410 b. 1976 School Closings ........................................1413 c. Longfellow Middle School ....................................1422 4. Attendance Zone Changes ........................................1428 a. Schools 16 and 25 ........................................... 1428 B. Equal Educational Opportunity .......................................1430 1. Physical Characteristics ..........................................1431 2. Staff ............................................................1433 3. Students ........................................................1437 4. Educational Programs and Resources .............................1439 5. Integration and Educational Opportunity ..........................1443 C. Vocational Education: Steering and Screening of Minority Students ... 1444 D. Special Education ...................................................1453 E. Teacher and Administrative Staff Assignments .......................1462 F. Refusal to Implement Desegregative Reorganization Plans ............1467 1. Introduction .....................................................1467 2. NYU Report ....................................................1469 3. Phase II ........................................................1483 V. THE CITY ..............................................................1500 A. Interrelationship Between Housing Practices and School Segregation .. 1500 B. Budgetary Control ..................................................1503 C. Mayoral Appointment of School Board Members ...........:..........1506 D. School Site Selection ................................................1513 1. Yonkers High School ............................................1513 2. Saunders Trades and Technical High School ......................1514 E. Other City Involvement in School Affairs ............................1516 1. Attendance Zone Changes ........................................1516 2. City Council Resolutions ......................................... 1517 3. School 4 ........................................................ 1518 VI. CONCLUSIONS OF LAW .......................................'........1521 A. Jurisdiction .........................................................1521 1. The Board of Education .........................................1522 2. The City ........................................................1522 B. Liability ............................................................1526 1. The Board of Education .........................................1526 a. Independent Conduct of School Authorities ...................1526 b. Denial of Equal Educational Opportunity .....................1530 c. Subsidized Housing Discrimination ...........................1531 2. The City ........................................................1537 VII. CONCLUSION ..........................................................1545 INTRODUCTION After nearly one hundred days of trial, during which eighty-four witnesses testified and thirty-eight depositions, as well as thousands of exhibits, were received in evidence, this Court is called upon to decide whether the City of Yonkers and the Yonkers Board of Education have intentionally created or maintained racial segregation in the City’s housing and schools. Before embarking on that task, we pause to make clear why that is the issue, and why it falls upon this Court to resolve it. First, the primary issue in this case is whether the City of Yonkers and the Yonkers Board of Education intentionally segregated its housing and schools, since it is clear that by all relevant standards, Yonkers and its public school system are, in fact, racially segregated. The principal question in controversy is whether the segregated condition of the City’s housing and schools resulted from the force of circumstances unintended by those who made the decisions which shaped the housing and schools of the community, or whether this condition resulted from an intent to segregate by race. This Court is called upon to resolve this controversy because the United States Department of Justice has commenced and has maintained, through two administrations, an action alleging that the housing and schools in Yonkers have been intentionally segregated by race, and the Yonkers NAACP has intervened in that action. The action was brought after efforts at conciliation of the “schools” portion of this litigation failed but with the assurances (made to Yonkers and to this Court by the plaintiffs and the Board of Education) that the initiation of this suit would not end efforts to resolve this controversy eonsensually. Mindful of the cost which this litigation has entailed, the divisiveness which it has engendered, the need for community support for voluntary remedial action to be successful — in short, the overall desirability of a resolution which originated with the parties themselves — more than the usual efforts at settlement were made. This included appointment of a Special Master, whose sole function was to attempt to bring the parties to a consensual resolution. See separate Opinion filed this date. By the closest of margins, the fruits of these efforts, an agreement among the Board of Education, the United States and the NAACP, conditional upon funding by the City Council, was rejected by that body. Hence, all efforts to consensually resolve this matter having failed, the task is ours and we shall proceed to discharge it. We set forth below, in detail commensurate with the voluminous and complex nature of the record, the findings of fact and conclusions of law which lead to our determination that the plaintiffs have sustained their burden of proving that Yonkers’ housing and schools have been intentionally segregated by race. In performing this inquiry, we have examined the actions of many officials who we are certain were entirely well-meaning public servants acting in accordance with their perception of what was feasible in the political and socioeconomic circumstances of Yonkers and in the best interests of that community. In many instances, acts were taken by elected officials in response to strong constituent pressures and perceptions of political reality. Members of the Board of Education also acted under similar circumstances, We are not passing moral judgments with respect to the actions of those who steered the destiny of Yonkers; nor do we suggest that the implementation of measures com trary to the political climate of the times would have been an easy task. Our inquiry is whether, under applicable legal standards, actions taken by the City of Yonkers and the Board of Education, with respect to housing and public schools, were in whole or in part intentionally segregative. We find that they were, for the reasons set forth below. HOUSING I. BACKGROUND The City of Yonkers is one of the five largest cities in the State of New York. Its population, according to 1980 census figures, is 195,331. Yonkers is located in Westchester County and is bounded on the west by the Hudson River, on the east by the Bronx River, on the south by the City of New York, and on the north by the Village of Hastings-on-Hudson and the Town of Greenburgh. The City is approximately three to three and one-half miles wide, four to six miles long, and encompasses some eighteen to twenty square miles. It is divided lengthwise by a series of ridges and valleys which run north to south, roughly parallel to the Hudson River. The Saw Mill and Nepperhan Rivers flow through the more western valleys. Over the course of the nineteenth century, Yonkers evolved from what was primarily a farming village into a significant industrial and commercial center. This development was concentrated in the Southwest section of the City in the areas along and between the Nepperhan, Saw Mill and Hudson Rivers, and along the Hudson River Railroad, which opened in 1849. Factories were built along the rivers, and a central commercial district, known as Getty Square, developed between the factories and along the railroad. From the latter portion of the nineteenth century up to World War II, Getty Square was the hub of commerce for Westchester cities along the Hudson as far north as Peekskill. With the factories, came large amounts of worker housing — generally poor in quality and heavily clustered in the valleys of the Southwest section of the City. The Northwest and East sections of Yonkers remained largely rural until the early 1920s when the Saw Mill River Parkway opened and a pattern of low density suburban housing development began. The pattern continued and accelerated with the construction of the Harlem Division Railroad, the Bronx River Parkway, the New York State Thruway, and the Sprain Brook Parkway — all of which run in a north-south direction and provide commuters with easy access to New York City. The three decades following World War II were the time of greatest housing development in Northwest and East Yonkers. Initially, the primary form of development was the single family housing subdivision. Somewhat later, in the 1960s and 1970s, multi-family apartment buildings were built in increasing numbers along the major arterial routes and the commuter rail lines. As the Northwest and East sections of the City expanded, however, the Southwest entered a period of decline. The housing stock deteriorated, and was not replaced or renovated on any significant scale. In 1954, with the closing of the Alexander Smith Carpet Mills, the Southwest’s largest employer, the area began to lose its industrial base. In addition, the Getty Square central business district began to stagnate, a phenomenon attributed primarily to lack of adequate highway access and parking, and to increased competition from shopping malls such as the Cross County Shopping Center. In 1949, with the passage of the National Housing Act of 1949, the City embarked upon a series of urban renewal and subsidized housing programs that have continued to the present day. Both programs have been largely confined to the Southwest section of the City. As of 1949, the City had two subsidized housing projects (the 550-unit Mulford Gardens and the 250-unit Cottage Place Gardens), both of which were located in Southwest Yonkers. Between 1949 and 1982, thirty-six more subsidized housing projects were developed, thirty-four of which are also located in Southwest Yonkers. The two exceptions are Curran Court, a 186-unit project for senior citizens on Martin Ray Place in East Yonkers, and Hall Court, a 48-unit project for families in an East Yonkers neighborhood known as Runyon Heights. In all, the Southwest contains 6,644 or 97.7% of the City’s 6,800 existing units of subsidized housing. The extreme concentration of subsidized housing that exists in Southwest Yonkers today is matched by an extreme concentration of the City’s 18.8% minority population. According to 1980 census figures, Southwest Yonkers accounts for 37.5% of the City’s total population, but contains 80.7% of the City’s minority population. Seven of the Southwest’s seventeen census tracts have a minority population greater than 50%. Six more have a minority population ranging between 25% and 50%. None has a minority population that is less than 9%. In contrast, only two of the thirty-two census tracts outside the Southwest have a minority population greater than 6%. One is census tract 7, whose 28.6% minority population is clustered in the southern end of the tract, where it abuts Southwest Yonkers and along the Hudson Division Railroad on the western edge of the tract. The second is census tract 18 in East Yonkers, which contains Runyon Heights, a longstanding enclave of black home owners, and the site of Hall Court, the only subsidized housing project for families that is located outside Southwest Yonkers. The minority population of census tract 18 is 79.8%. The remaining thirty census tracts have minority populations ranging from 1.5% to 6.0%, with half having less than 3%. GX 1225.1, 1225.6. II. STATEMENT OF CLAIMS AND LEGAL STANDARDS Plaintiffs contend that the existing concentration of subsidized housing in Southwest Yonkers reflects a pattern and practice of housing discrimination by the City in violation of Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (also known as the Fair Housing Act) and the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution. Specifically, plaintiffs contend that City officials, in response to constituent pressures, have made the preservation of existing patterns of racial segregation a controlling factor in site selection for subsidized housing. According to the plaintiffs, subsidized housing for families has been equated with minority housing, and for that reason, has been confined to the disproportionately minority areas of the City — most often, the downtown area of Southwest Yonkers. Subsidized housing for senior citizens is alleged to have been less consistently identified with minority housing, and therefore less consistently confined to minority areas. Nonetheless, according to plaintiffs, it, too, has met racially influenced resistance from area residents, often based on the concern that it might be converted to housing for families. Plaintiffs contend that the Saw Mill River Parkway has been viewed as the barrier separating overwhelmingly white East Yonkers from the racially mixed (and, since the mid-1960s, increasingly minority) population of Southwest Yonkers, and that City officials have been consistently unwilling, even when strongly pressed by federal authorities, to breach that racial barrier by placing subsidized housing for families east of the Saw Mill River Parkway. The City, in turn, contends that its selection of sites for subsidized housing has been in no respect discriminatory, and that any segregative effect which the site selections may have had was entirely unintended. In particular, the City insists that the extreme concentration of subsidized housing in Southwest Yonkers reflects only a consistent strategy, adopted for reasons unrelated to race, to use subsidized housing to help rebuild Southwest Yonkers. In defense of that strategy, the City argues that it was recommended by outside consultants as well as by its own planning staff, and that it was consistent with, and indeed even encouraged by, federal housing and urban renewal policy. As the contentions of the parties suggest, the primary focus of the inquiry now before us is whether the actions challenged by plaintiffs were undertaken with discriminatory intent —specifically, the intent to create or maintain racial segregation. An action which merely has the unintended effect of creating or maintaining racial segregation violates neither the Constitution, Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corporation, 429 U.S. 252, 264-65, 97 S.Ct. 555, 562-63, 50 L.Ed.2d 450 (1977) (Arlington Heights I) (citing Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 96 S.Ct. 2040, 48 L.Ed.2d 597 (1976)), nor, except in certain limited circumstances, the Fair Housing Act. A plaintiff is not required to prove, however, that segregative intent was the sole or even primary motive underlying the defendant’s actions. Indeed, as the Supreme Court noted in Arlington Heights I, [rjarely can it be said that a legislature or administrative body operating under a broad mandate made a decision motivated solely by a single concern, or even that a particular purpose was the “dominant” or “primary” one. In fact, it is because legislators and administrators are properly concerned with balancing numerous competing considerations that courts refrain from reviewing the merits of their decisions, absent a showing of arbitrariness or irrationality. But racial discrimination is not just another competing consideration. When there is a proof that a discriminatory purpose has been a motivating factor in the decision, this judicial deference is no longer justified. 429 U.S. at 265-66, 97 S.Ct. at 563 (footnotes omitted). A policy of racial segregation, in other words, is impermissible even as a secondary motive for action, and “cannot be justified by the good intentions with which other laudable goals are pursued.” Gautreaux v. Chicago Housing Authority, 296 F.Supp. 907, 914 (N.D.Ill.1969), (citing Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954)); see also Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 16, 78 S.Ct. 1401, 1408, 3 L.Ed.2d 5 (1958) (quoting Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60, 38 S.Ct. 16, 62 L.Ed. 149 (1917)); United States v. City of Parma, 494 F.Supp. 1049, 1054 (N.D.Ohio 1980), aff'd in relevant part, 661 F.2d 562 (6th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 456 U.S. 926, 102 S.Ct. 1972, 72 L.Ed.2d 441 (1982). The factors that are to be considered in determining whether actions were taken with discriminatory intent include the degree of any discriminatory effect; the historical background of the actions; the specific sequence of events leading up to the actions; the presence or absence of departures from normal procedures or substantive criteria; and the legislative history of the actions. Arlington Heights I, supra, 429 U.S. at 266-68, 97 S.Ct. at 563-65. To prove a pattern and practice of discrimination, a plaintiff must prove that it was a regular (although not necessarily uniform) practice of the defendant to act with discriminatory intent. See United States v. City of Parma, supra, 494 F.Supp. at 1095. And in determining whether the plaintiff has carried that burden of proof, the court must view the evidence as a whole. Id. at 1055 (citing cases). As the District Court for the Northern District of Ohio explained in United States v. City of Parma: The character and effect of a general policy is to be judged in its entirety, and not by dismembering it as if it consisted of unrelated parts ... Even intrinsically lawful acts may lose that character when they are constituent elements of an unlawful scheme. Id. (citations omitted). In large part, this rule is no more than a reminder of the general rule of evidence that when actions having a particular effect are repeated, the inference is stronger that the effect of the actions was intended. See 2 Wigmore, Evidence § 312 (3d ed. 1940). III. THE CITY’S EARLY ACTIVITIES UNDER THE NATIONAL HOUSING ACT OF 1949 Upon passage of the National Housing Act of 1949, the City of Yonkers quickly applied for the federal housing assistance made available under Title III of the Act, and just as quickly encountered a serious obstacle to its ability to make use of the assistance. The City’s announcement of the first proposed site for a public housing project to be funded under the Act (a site in Northwest Yonkers) prompted immediate and strong opposition from area residents and civic associations. The phenomenon was one which would repeat itself with respect to most of the other sites subsequently proposed, and would strongly influence the willingness of the Planning Board and the City Council to approve the sites. The result was the loss of available and badly needed federal housing assistance, the repeated compromise of stated planning objectives, and, eventually, endangerment of the City’s entire urban' renewal program due to the City’s consequent inability to provide relocation housing for those displaced by urban renewal. The sites that prompted community opposition almost invariably were those in overwhelmingly white East and Northwest Yonkers or the overwhelmingly white areas of ¡Southwest Yonkers. The few sites that /appear to have prompted little or no community opposition, and that successfully emerged from the site selection process, tended to be in the more heavily minority areas of the City — and in particular, in and around the downtown area of Southwest Yonkers. A. The Procedure for the Selection and Approval of Sites for Public Housing Title III of the National Housing Act provides funds for the construction of public housing — that is, low-income housing owned and operated by a local housing authority. Under the Act, the housing authority applies for a “reservation” of funds sufficient to build a certain number of housing units. Sites are then selected by the housing authority, submitted for any necessary local approvals, and once locally approved, submitted to the federal authorities. The agency authorized to proposed, construct, and operate public housing in Yonkers is the Yonkers Municipal. Housing Authority (“MHA”), a public corporation organizicTm the 1930s pursuant to New York’s Public Housing Law. Under that law, any projects undertaken by the MHA must be approved by a majority vote of both the City’s Planning Board and the City Council, or (if the Planning Board disapproves), by a three-quarters majority of the City Council. The City Council consists of twelve members plus the Mayor, all of whom are elected for two-year terms. Throughout the years in question, each of the City’s twelve wards held a separate election to choose a representative on the Council. The only member chosen in a city-wide election was the Mayor, who serves on the Council as a Couneilmember-at-large. The Planning Board and the MHA Board each consists of seven members. Planning Board members are appointed by the May- or; MHA Board members are appointed by the City Manager, who, under the City Charter, is the chief executive and administrative officer of the City, and who, in turn, is appointed by the City Council. B. Site Selection for the City’s 1949 Allocation of Public Housing Units City officials were eager to take advantage of the housing assistance made available under Title III of the 1949 Housing Act. Due to the rapidly.deteriorating condition of.the housing stock in the Southwest, there was, in general, a serious need for decent low-cost housing in Yonkers. In addition, the construction of public housing was perceived to be important to the urban renewal plans which the City had begun to formulate in response to the urban renewal assistance made available by Title I of the 1949 Act. Title I established a program of loans and capital grants for slum clearance and redevelopment; the program contemplated that cities would acquire and clear blighted land, prepare the site, and then sell or lease it to private enterprises for redevelopment. Title I also required, however, that the cities provide “decent, safe and sanitary” housing for persons displaced from urban renewal areas, and city officials considered public housing to be the only likely source of relocation housing for families living in urban renewal areas. GX 1058.16. In August of 1949, a few months after the passage of the 1949 Act, the City applied for a reservation of 1,000 units of public housing, and received an allocation of 750 units. The deadline for site submission was August of 1950. It took the City nine years, however, to approve a sufficient number of sites to make use of that first year’s allocation of public housing units, and the chief reason for the delay was recurring community opposition to the various sites proposed. The MHA announced its first proposed site in February of 1950. The site was a vacant parcel of land on Nepperhan and Roberts Avenue, an overwhelmingly white area in Northwest Yonkers. GX 1225.41. Among the stated reasons for the selection of the site was that the use of vacant land (as opposed to a site which required clearance of existing structures) was less costly and would eliminate the need for relocating those displaced by the clearance of the site — a task that had proven to be a major obstacle to the timely completion of Cottage Place Gardens, the second of the City’s two existing public housing projects. GX 1058.5; 1053.27. Within a week of the MHA’s announcement of the Nepperhan/Roberts site, however, a neighborhood group called the Rose Hill Community Association adopted a resolution opposing the choice. Copies of the resolution were sent to the MHA, the City Planning Board and the City Council. GX 1058.6, 1058.9. A few days later, the Yonkers Council of Civic & Taxpayers Associations joined the opposition. GX 1058.-8. The Rose Hill resolution urged that public housing be used to clear slums, and it maintained that the Nepperhan/Roberts site was, in any case, inappropriate for public housing due to inadequate school, transportation, and shopping facilities. “Locating this project in a present slum area,” the resolution added, “would not have a school problem as the school probably already exists.” GX 1058.9. The Nepperhan/Roberts site was subsequently disapproved by the Planning Board, GX 1058.-17, an action which prompted a letter of commendation from the Yonkers Council of Civic & Taxpayers Associations. GX 1058.-22. At least two other sites formally proposed by the MHA soon thereafter likewise prompted strong community opposition. Indeed, the volume of complaints received by the Mayor’s office with respect to the various sites being considered for public housing was so great that two members of the City Council were appointed to attend MHA meetings, consult with the MHA Board, and in general “let the public know that the [City] Council [had] an interest” in site selection. GX 1204.4. 3 two sites in question — Park Hill Avenue at Van Cortlandt Park Avenue and Lake Avenue — were both in heavily white areas of Southwest Yonkers. GX 1225.41. In addition, both were originally supported by the councilmen representing the wards in which the sites were located (the seventh and sixth wards respectively), and then subsequently opposed by those councilmen, after local residents had made their own opposition known. Seventh ward residents appeared at a Planning Board meeting held to consider the Park Hill Avenue site and submitted a petition in opposition. A resident identifying himself as a spokesman for the group stated that “it was not in the best interests of the City of Yonkers and certainly not to the best interests of adjaa news article reported that the councilman for the seventh ward, who had previously asked that his ward be surveyed for possible sites, had written to the Chairman of the City Planning Board (with a copy to press), asking that the Park Hill Avenue site be excluded from consideration and expressing his disappointment that the Nepperhan/Roberts site in Northwest Yonkers had been rejected.. GX 1058.25. No further action was taken on the seventh ward site. Similarly, a site on Lake Avenue in the sixth ward was originally recommended by the ward councilman and approved by the Planning Board and City Council. GX 1058.31, 1058.37, 1058.43, 1058.47. A subsequent attempt to expand the site, however, resulted in strong public opposition to both the expansion and the site itself, Representatives of an ad hoc committee of sixth ward residents appeared at a Planning Board meeting to present a petition in opposition and to speak against the site. GX 1058.47. The committee’s objections were repeated at two additional Planning Board meetings held several weeks later, at which time the ward councilman announced that he, too, was now opposed to the site. GX 1058.48; GX 1058.51. The Planning Board voted unanimously to disapprove the requested extension, and the following week the MHA voted to abandon the site. GX 1204.6. Area residents appeared at the MHA meeting with a petition bearing 1,000 signatures which, they maintained, “barely scratched] the surface of those who object to the site.” Id. A spokesman for the protesters mentioned in passing the inadequacy of school and transportation facilities, but then characterized those as “minor objections,” and stated that the “real objection” to a housing project on the site was the effect that it would have on property values in the area, jje predicted that it would cause “financial Provea ana Put mt0 development only one s^e' s^e was 011 Pabsade Avenue, in one of the more heavily minority areas of Southwest Yonkers, slightly to the south °^> an<^ halfway between, the City’s two existing public housing projects. GX 1225.-^1. The site had apparently prompted no public opposition, and although the City’s Planning Director had suggested that the site was better suited for industrial use, it had been approved and was scheduled for 274 units of public housing. GX 1058.37; 1AfCQ qq ‘ ' In December, a federal official appeared at a meeting of the MHA and told the City that it faced imminent loss of the nearly 500 units remaining in its reservation unless additional units were put into development immediately. GX 1204.7. The official also cautioned that funding decisions for future years would take into account whether the City had been able to make use of previous allocations. Id. The City responded by voting to increase the number of units scheduled for the Palisade Avenue site to 415, despite a prior recommendation by the Planning Board that the size of public housing be limited to 250 units so as “to reduce their impact on the neighborhoods where they are located” and so that they might “be better integrated with other types of housing existing or to be built in the project areas.” GX 1058.16 at 11767. When the 413-unit Schlobohm Houses opened on Palisade Avenue, all of the City’s 1,213 units of public housing were concentrated within several blocks of each other in Southwest Yonkers. In 1951 through 1953, efforts continued to find approvable sites for the more than 300 public housing units remaining in the City’s 1949 allocation. Eleven sites were formally proposed by the MHA (six in the Southwest, two in the Northwest, and three in East Yonkers), but none was approved and submitted to the federal authorities, and the remaining units of public housing were lost by the City when the funding legislation expired in 1953. Once again, the period was characterized by pervasive community opposition to the various sites proposed. City officials were heard to observe during these years that there seemed to be opposition to every site proposed, GX 1058.65, that “[s]ome civic organizations are in favor of public housing as long as you don’t put it in their neighborhood,” GX 1059.4, and that the more time that was given to the consideration of a site, the more objections there were. GX 1204.13. The Yonkers Council of Civic & Taxpayers Associations meanwhile continued to urge that public housing be used solely to clear slums, GX 1058.102; 1059.6, and it was joined in that position by other residents, GX 1059.1; 1058.86, and even, on occasion, by some couneilmen. GX 1204.-13. At least eight of the eleven sites formally considered during these years (including all three east side sites) prompted opposition from area residents, local civic associations, and ward couneilmen. And once again, a dominant concern — particularly in connection with the sites proposed in East Yonkers — was the effect that a public housing project would have on surrounding property values. With respect to one East Yonkers site, for example, a letter sent to the Planning Board and quoted by the press objected to the prospect of being “uprooted” from the neighborhood and stated that it was “a well-known fact that slum-clearance projects often lead to the eventual deterioration of the surrounding community by the element which they attract.” GX 1059.5. Various neighborhood associations likewise contended that selecting one of the East side sites proposed “would be seriously detrimental to [the] well-being ... and interest” of area residents and indeed of the City as a whole. GX 1059.7; see also GX 1059.6; 1059.8; 1059.9. The president of one of those associations suggested to the City Planning Board that the East side sites under consideration should be reserved for the same “class of people now there,” GX 1059.9, and argued that the “people a public housing project would serve” would in any case find it burdensome to travel to East Yonkers. Id. Edward O’Neill, the councilman for the East side ward in which the proposed sites were located, likewise argued strongly against their appropriateness for public housing. Soon after the sites were announced, O’Neill publicly declared that he was “not opposed to low-rent housing, but it was inconceivable to [him] that it should be located in areas where there is no possible need for it and where those areas cannot possibly handle it.” GX 1059.6. O’Neill noted that “practically every civic and social group in [his own and a neighboring East side] ward has gone on record strongly opposing the location of low rent housing on premium land,” and that since the East side schools were already overcrowded, the addition of 335 families “would cause irreparable harm.” Id. In addition, O’Neill appeared at a Planning Board meeting held to consider the sites and argued that putting public housing in “fine, residential” communities would be “a body blow to [the City’s] finances.” GX 1059.9; GX 1059.10. O’Neill appealed to the Board “as property owners,” suggesting that they surely knew what public housing does to the surrounding areas. If you put housing in an area not desirable for it you do a disservice to the people in that neighborhood. Many people have sunk their last cent into their homes. GX 1059.10. Like the sites opposed by area residents in 1950, the eight sites opposed in 1951 through 1953 all were in areas of the City that were overwhelmingly white. GX 1225.41. Two of the three sites for which there is little or no evidence of opposition— including one (the Waring site) which was strongly supported by some civic associations and councilmen as “ideal” for public housing — were in the downtown (and more heavily minority) portion of Southwest Yonkers. Id. MHA members characterized the Waring site as a “realistic” choice that had the “greatest chance” of winning City Council approval and proposed it twice as the final deadline for site submission drew near in 1953. GX 1059.4; 1204.18. The Planning Board, however, rejected the site each time, explaining that it was poorly situated for residential use and in an area that was already overcongested. GX 1059.-11; 1059.17. In 1956, under new funding legislation, the City was able to renew its reservation of the 335 public housing units remaining in its 1949 allocation. However, when site selection efforts resumed in 1956, the pattern of community opposition resumed as well. Despite formal consideration of at least eight sites in 1956 and 1957, and despite repeated expressions of concern by City officials that readily available housing assistance might once again be lost, and that the City’s urban renewal plans might be delayed for lack of relocation housing, see e.g., GX 1060.16; 1060.23; 1060.25; 1060.41; 1062.2; 1062.19, the City did not approve a single site for public housing. Four sites (two in Southwest Yonkers and two in East Yonkers) were formally proposed by the MHA in 1956. Three prompted vigorous community opposition; the fourth (Western Avenue in Southwest Yonkers) was opposed by the Planning Board on the ground that it was in the path of a proposed arterial route. None was approved by the City Council. With respect to two of the three sites that prompted community opposition — St. Nick’s Oval in East Yonkers and a site on Fillmore and Garfield Streets in Southwest Yonkers (commonly known as the Russian American Memorial Park or RAMP site)— the pattern was the same as in previous years. The sites were in overwhelmingly white neighborhoods, GX 1225.41, and were vigorously opposed by area residents and neighborhood associations at rallies and in petitions and letters. See generally GX 1060. The third site, however, presented a variation on the theme. The site (Ridgeview Avenue) was in Runyon Heights, a longstanding and self-contained enclave of black homeowners in East Yonkers, and its proposal produced the first apparent evidence of open discussion of the racial implications of site selection for public housing. An attorney for one of the Runyon Heights neighborhood associations told the City Council that the trend had moved “away from putting housing sites in minority areas, as it has a tendency to create slums” and argued that the City “must give this area a chance to break its bounds,” saying that “if we drop a housing project in there, it will never have a chance.” P-I 105-17. A spokesman for the Yonkers branch of the NAACP similarly declared that the organization was “disturbed” to find a project being proposed for an area that was so heavily minority, warning that the project could become a “Negro project" and the school that served it a “Negro school.” Id. A representative of the Urban League of Westchester County also appeared before the City Council and opposed the project, arguing that studies had shown that when a housing project was put in a predominantly black area, it became “difficult to obtain [a] nonsegregated occupancy.” Id. At two City Council sessions attended by some 400 to 1,000 area residents, the Council voted to disapprove all three sites — actions which reportedly prompted applause and cheers from the audience. GX 1060.23; 1060.40; P-I 105-42. Although the votes were unanimous, there were expressions of concern by some council members about the effect of the votes since the new deadline for site submission was only a few days away. Id. As the last site (St. Nick’s Oval) was disapproved, one councilman observed that he felt the vote was “signing the death knell” for the city’s reservation of housing units, and that the City could not hope to obtain urban renewal funds unless it had a place to relocate displacees. P-I 105-42. However, the City was able to obtain yet another extension of the deadline, and site selection efforts continued. In 1957 and 1958, community opposition was a frequent topic of discussion in site selection meetings and press reports. See generally GX 1062, 1063. In January of 1957, for example, the councilman for the fourth ward proposed a tenth ward site, saying that its relatively isolated location made it “a natural” for public housing since “no indignant citizens could come and protest.” GX 1062.1. Protests were reported, however, by the tenth ward councilman, who promised to defeat the proposal. GX 1062.3, and the MHA voted unanimously to reject the site. GX 1062.5. Meanwhile, two Southwest Yonkers sites were proposed by private developers for Mitchell-Lama projects, a state-funded subsidized housing program for middle-income (and, therefore, usually white) residents. The proposals prompted no opposition, and the City Council readily approved the tax abatements needed to enable the two projects — Sunset Green (a 70-unit cooperative on Hawthorne Avenue) and Sunnyside Manor (a 121-unit rental building on Sunny-side Drive) — to go forward. GX 1061; 1066. In the spring of 1958, the MHA tried again and proposed five more sites for public housing. Three were in Southwest Yonkers (Stanley Avenue; School Street; and Western Avenue); and two were in East Yonkers (the old School 1 site and Smart Avenue). GX 1063.2. Emmett Burke, the Secretary-Director of the MHA, described the sites to the Planning Board as “the least objectionable” of those surveyed but nonetheless that there would be “a lot of objections on the grounds of race or age in certain sites.” GX 1063.8. Burke went on to observe that “[m]any people simply do not want public housing.” Id. The Planning Board approved the Stanley Avenue, Smart Avenue, and School 1 sites, and disapproved the School Street and Western Avenue sites (the latter for the second time) on the ground that lay in the path of a proposed arterial route. Id. Two of the sites approved by the Planning Board were in overwhelmingly white neighborhoods; the third (the School 1 site) was in Runyon Heights. GX 1225.41. In April, as the City Council was preparing to consider the proposed sites, a letter was sent to the council members from a committee claiming to have been delegated by twelve taxpayer and civic associations “to acquaint each and every member of the [City] Council with the fact that there is tremendous opposition to additional low rent public housing in Yonkers.” P-I 106.-26 (GX 1063.13). The letter went on to state that: We personally prefer a public referendum with time to acquaint each and every citizen with the full facts on public housing. Where will these tenants come from? How will we provide schools? How much will it cost us over the years? What safeguards do we have against our having to absorb the overflow from Puerto Rico or Harlem? Where will the people go that will have to vacate their private homes? Id. The letter closed by saying that “each and every one of your constituents is looking to you to again knock down this latest attempt on the part of the public housing group to shove off on the citizens of Yonkers something that the majority does not want.” Id. A week later, the City Council voted to refer the proposed sites to its committee on housing. GX 1065.15. The following month, as the Council again prepared to vote on the sites, Mayor Kristensen publicly observed that “we’re running into the same situation we customarily do and have done over the past nine years or so, that is, everyone wants housing, but no one wants it in his neighborhood____ The time is coming when we are going to get those 335 units one way or another.” GX 1063.17. On May 27, 1958, nearly nine years after the City received its 1949 allocation of public housing units, the City Council finally approved two sites for the last of the units in the allocation. In addition, a third site was approved for 108 units of senior citizen housing (a newly authorized form of public housing). The three sites approved were School Street and the School 1 site for family housing and the Western Avenue site for senior citizen housing. GX 1063.-18. In making its choices, the Council appears to have given little weight to the views of its Planning Board. The School Street and Western Avenue sites were strenuously lobbied against by the Planning Board on the ground that they would interfere with construction of an arterial system that was critical to the future health of the downtown area. GX 1063.8; 1063.17; see also Tr. 9621-24 (Pistone). Yet, both sites were approved by the Council. In addition, the Planning Board recommended the Stanley Avenue and Smart Avenue sites — and indeed the City’s Planning Director, Philip Pistone, had characterized the latter as “ideal.” GX 1063.8; Tr. 9616-17 (Pistone). Yet, the Smart Avenue site was strongly opposed by area residents and the ward councilwoman, and both sites were rejected by the Council. GX 1063.8; 1063.18; 1063.19. Following a by-now familiar pattern, the sites rejected were in overwhelmingly white areas of the City, and both sites approved for family housing were in heavily minority areas. GX 1225.41. Only the Western Avenue site which was to be used for senior citizen housing was in a heavily white area, and even that site was not far from blocks with a significant minority population. Id. C. Site Selection for Senior Citizen Housing For the next few years, the City focused primarily on public housing for senior citizens — an activity that proved somewhat less controversial but not entirely problem-free. In 1961, a proposal to put 300 units of predominantly senior citizen housing on Garden Street just north of Schlobohm Houses (the 413-unit project built on Palisade Avenue in the early 1950s) was approved with no apparent community or official opposition, GX 1064.1-.5, despite the fact that with Schlobohm Houses in place, the area already contained an amount of public housing that was far in excess of what the Planning Board had recommended. See, HOUSING III.B supra. A subsequent attempt to expand the site in 1962, however, did prompt opposition on the ground that it would result in an over-concentration of public housing units in the area. GX 1064.14, 1064.15, 1064.19. The Planning Board initially disapproved the expansion, then three months later voted 3-2 (with two members absent) to reverse itself. GX 1064.16; GX 1064.19; 1064.20. A colloquy that immediately preceded the second vote suggests that little had changed from the preceding years. Planning Director Philip Pistone stated that he would prefer to have senior citizen housing “dispersed,” and that there was “no reason why it should all be concentrated in one area ... one ward.” GX 1064.20. In response, a Board member stated simply that, “what you say is interesting, but when you come up before the [City] Council, every councilman objects to it.” Id. The Planning Board’s vote was subsequently challenged and held invalid on the ground that the full Board had not been present. GX 1064.21; GX 1064.23. The City Council then deferred consideration of the expansion, and it was apparently pursued no further. GX 1064.24. Instead, a new round of efforts was undertaken to find sites for senior citizen housing. In February of 1963, the MHA proposed eight sites — four in Southwest Yonkers and four in East Yonkers. GX 1069.7. The sites were announced as proposed sites for senior citizen housing, but the Secretary-Director of the MHA was quoted by the press as saying that the sites might also be considered for family housing. GX 1069.7. Protests quickly arose with respect to three of the East side sites, and these sites were largely dismissed by the MHA’s Secretary-Director at a subsequent Planning Board meeting. GX 1069.-10; 1069.11; 1069.13; 1069.15. The Lincoln Park Taxpayers Association, writing in opposition to the sites, raised familiar concerns about decreasing property values and adverse effects on the “character of the community.” GX 1069.11. The Association urged, as other groups had in the past, that public housing be used solely to clear slums. Id. No distinction was drawn between public housing for senior citizens and public housing for families. Concern was simply expressed that the placement of any public housing in the area would be “at the sacrifice of real estate values in the community, and [that] declining real estate values would be followed by neglect and deterioration of the neighborhood.” Id. The following month, in early March of 1963, the Housing Committee of the City Council recommended approval of two of the other sites for senior citizen housing— Martin Ray Place in East Yonkers (where temporary veterans housing had been located) and a site on Ashburton Avenue and Seymour Street in Southwest Yonkers— and the Council scheduled a site selection hearing for March 26th. GX 1069.20. The next day, the MHA withdrew the remaining six sites from consideration. GX 1069.-21. In the weeks before the hearing, the Board of Education and the PTA opposed selection of the Martin Ray Place site on the ground that it had been promised to the Board for a much needed expansion of School 31. GX 1069.22; 1069.25. In addition, the Pastor of St. Joseph’s Church opposed the selection of the Ashburton/Seymour site on the ground that there was already a serious overconcentration of public housing in the downtown Southwest Yonkers area. GX 1069.24. Both protests were reiterated at the City Council hearing. GX 1069.26; 1069.28. No neighborhood or civic associations appear to have joined the opposition, however, and faced with a firm site selection deadline of April 1 (the deadline having already once been extended), and with a reported 1,800 to 2,000 applications for senior citizen housing, the Council voted to approve both sites. GX 1069.27; 1069.28. The thirty-two unit Kristensen Houses (on Seymour Street) and the 186-unit Curran Court (on Martin Ray Place) opened in 1967. C-1700. D. The City’s Campaign to Produce Sites for Relocation Housing From 1958 (when the last of the City’s 1949 allocation of public housing units for families was finally put into development) through 1965, no apparent efforts were made to increase the City’s stock of public housing for families. The only additional family housing approved during this time came with the decision to devote the City’s Jefferson-Riverdale (or “Stage I”) urban renewal area (an area just southwest of City Hall in downtown Yonkers) to middle-income housing. In the spring of 1962, the City Council approved, without apparent objection, a tax abatement for a 544-unit Mitchell-Lama project to be called Phillipse Towers, GX 1067.5; 1067.11, and the project opened in September of 1964. GX 1067.13. The City’s long period of inactivity with respect to the development of low-income family housing does not appear to have been based on any perception that what had been characterized as a “desperate” need for such housing — both in general and as a relocation resource — had been met. A strong indication that the need had not been met came in 1965, when HUD notified the City that its preliminary application for its Stage II (or “Riverview”) urban renewal project had been rejected. The project would have involved the relocation of 1,300 families, and was rejected on the ground that the City’s relocation track record for the Stage I project had been poor. HUD set a maximum relocation workload of 300 families for the Stage II project. GX 1071.13; 1078.4. In response, the City embarked on a vigorous campaign to find and approve sites for family housing. Joining in the effort was the newly formed Yonkers Urban Renewal Agency (“YURA"). As in previous years, however, community opposition proved to be a major stumbling block. In the months after HUD rejected the City’s initial Stage II urban renewal application, the need for more public housing as a source of relocation housing, and the problem of persistent community opposition to sites proposed for such housing, were frequent topics of discussion in meetings held among City agencies and with the federal authorities. See generally GX 1078. In one meeting, the Mayor was asked to explain the nature of the City Council’s objections to two Southwest Yonkers sites (one between Stanley and Riverdale Avenues and another on Culver Street). GX 1078.3. The Mayor replied that the two ward councilmen involved “feel that their wards are being declared ‘blighted areas’ and they are not too happy about it because it will affect the voting.” Id. A subsequent meeting in April of 1965 among George Piantadosi (the acting director of YURA), Philip Pistone (the City’s Planning Director), and Emmett Burke (Secretary-Director of the MHA) yielded a list of twelve possible sites for public housing. GX 1078.8. In an apparent attempt to deflect potential opposition to the sites, it was agreed that a press release would be issued listing the sites but identifying them merely as “sites under discussion,” and that no individual would be identified on record as supporting specific sites. Id. The anticipated opposition came to pass the following month. The MHA submitted eleven sites (nine from the joint list plus two others) to the Planning Board and the City Council. GX 1078.12; 1078.21. The three East Yonkers sites on the list as well as two sites in the overwhelmingly white Nodine Hill area of Southwest Yonkers prompted letters and petitions in opposition from area residents, civic associations, and (in the case of the two East side sites in the twelfth ward) from the ward councilman, Nicholas Benyo. GX 1078.15; 1078.17-19; 1078.23; 1078.26-28. Councilman Benyo protested to the Planning Board that the areas “still [had] not recovered from the heavy invasion of apartment buildings” there and that “[a]ny further concentration of population would lead to a rapid deterioration of the entire area.” GX 1078.15. As the Planning Board and City Council were preparing to act on the sites, The New York Times published a story on the controversy, describing at some length “the split between suburban conscious East Yonkers and urban conscious West Yonkers.” GX 1078.16. The article reported that previous projects had been “built in slum areas, reinforcing what planners call socio-economic ghettos,” and quoted one resident of East Yonkers as saying that her family had “saved for years to move out of the city,” and that “now they want to put right next door everything we tried to get away from.” Id. Another East Yonkers resident was reported to have explained that “it wasn’t that she didn’t believe in racial or social or economic integration ... but [that] those people from Yonkers would feel so out of place here ... it would not be fair to them.” Id. The Times article was cited to City officials in a letter from the pastor of a Southwest Yonkers church, who said that its reference to reinforcing socio-economic ghettoes “sums up our argument” against the placement of more subsidized housing in the downtown area of Southwest Yonkers. GX 1078.22. “Basically,” the letter declared, “this is out and out discrimination not only against negroes, but against lower-income whites as well.” Id.; see also GX 1078.14. In May of 1965, the Planning Board voted to disapprove all of the sites except four in Southwest Yonkers. GX 1078.28. The only comment recorded in the Planning Board minutes with respect to the two twelfth ward sites in East Yonkers was that Councilman Benyo and his constituents were opposed to the site. Id. One week later, the City Council referred all eleven sites to its committee on housing, where they remained until April of the following year. GX 1078.32. In December of 1965, with the matter still in committee, Emmett Burke, the Secretary-Director of the MHA, sent a memo to the City Council asking for a decision on the sites. The Council, in turn, referred Burke’s memo to YURA, which replied merely that public housing was indeed needed for relocation housing, but that it would “not presume to recommend for or against any of the sites selected.” GX 1078.43. Nevertheless, at a meeting held the same day with a citizen’s advisory committee, George Piantadosi, the acting director of YURA, criticized the City Council for “doing nothing” about public housing, and one of the committee members suggested that the committee undertake its own site investigation. GX 1078.44. In February of 1966, Burke wrote to the City Manager, asking again “for serious and immediate consideration” of the eleven possible housing sites. GX 1078.48. He explained that.there were eighty-seven unused housing units from a previous reservation that might still be available to the City, but that he could not justify attempting to retain or expand the reservation (as would be necessary if future relocation needs were to be met) unless housing sites were approved and ready for development. Id. Two months later, the Council’s Housing and Urban Renewal Committee finally acted, recommending the same four sites that the Planning Board had approved eleven months earlier. GX 1078.51. Recalling the pattern of previous years, the sites not recommended by the committee were in areas of the City that were overwhelmingly white, and the four sites recommended were in areas of the Southwest that were, or were rapidly .becoming, heavily minority. GX 1225.42; 1225.44. The committee’s recommendation was strongly criticized by the Yonkers Council of Churches, the NAACP, CORE, and a member of the Yonkers Human Rights Commission. The groups noted that all four sites were located in the “core” or “ghetto” area of the City, and they suggested that the selection represented acquiescence on the part of the Council to the “phenomenal pressure” put on it by the residents of other areas of Yonkers and “portend[ed] a greater ghettoization of those neighborhoods whose ‘powerless’ and ‘voiceless’ residents could not generate the same kinds of ‘pressures’ as could the other