From: The New York Times
By: Sam Roberts // August 11, 2009
Westchester Adds Housing to Desegregation Pact
Westchester County entered into a landmark desegregation agreement on Monday that would compel it to create hundreds of houses and apartments for moderate-income people in overwhelmingly white communities and aggressively market them to nonwhites in Westchester and New York City.
The lawsuit, filed under the federal False Claims Act, argued that when Westchester applied for federal Community Development Block Grants for affordable housing and other projects, county officials treated part of the application as boilerplate — lying when they claimed to have complied with mandates to encourage fair housing.
The agreement calls for the county to spend more than $50 million of its own money, in addition to other funds, to build or acquire 750 homes or apartments, 630 of which must be provided in towns and villages where black residents constitute 3 percent or less of the population and Hispanic residents make up less than 7 percent. The 120 other spaces must meet different criteria for cost and ethnic concentration.
Implications for Developers -- If a city is bowing to NIMBY forces in fighting affordable housing, remind them of their obligation in taking federal funds to "affirmatively further fair housing."
For two great discussions of the Westchester County case, see the Equity Blog and Poverty in America.
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