Opinion

United States v. Yonkers Board of Education

624 F. Supp. 1276
1985 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13713

Court: District Court, S.D. New York
Filed: Nov 20, 1985
Status: Published
Author: Sand
On the bench: Sand
Cited by: 83 cases
Authority: More cited than 96.6%

engaging in rigorous analysis of community and governmental interests in a lawsuit alleging discriminatory racial segregation in housing and public schools

How later courts described this case

engaging in rigorous analysis of community and governmental interests in a lawsuit alleging discriminatory racial segregation in housing and public schools
where allegations that racial segregation resulted from subsidized housing programs involved, statute of limitations no bar to suit because incidents over many years were "part of a continuing pattern and practice of discrimination”
housing projects, with “extreme consistency [were] rejected, abandoned, or otherwise opposed” in White areas of the city
distinguishing the situation in Yonkers from that in Bell

Written by the judges who cited it.

The opinion

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

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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

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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.

*1289

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 primar

*1290

ily 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.

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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

*1292

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.

*1293

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

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

*1298

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

*1299

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

*1300

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.

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 Pali

*1301

sade 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

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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.

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 hous

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ing. 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,

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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 residential neighborhoods where” sites had been proposed. GX 1078.58, 1078.60, 1078.62, 1078.64.

In addition, the groups noted that three of the sites were densely occupied and presented serious relocation problems, GX 1078.58, 1078.60, 1078.64, an assessment with which YURA concurred. GX 1078.66. The groups gave qualified support to the fourth site (on Hawthorne Avenue) as representing the “lesser of evils,” but urged the City to adopt a policy of “scattering” its public housing throughout the City. GX 1078.58, 1078.60, 1078.62, 1078.64.

The following month, in May of 1966, the City Council voted to approve the Hawthorne Avenue site and to refer the other three back to committee. GX 1078.62; GX 1078.63. However, due to an apparent breakdown of communication between the Council and YURA on one side and the MHA on the other, the site was not submitted to HUD for another several months.

When the site finally was submitted, HUD declared it to be unacceptable. The City was advised by the Regional Administrator in HUD’s New York office that the Hawthorne/Riverdale site was “marginally feasible” and presented problems with respect to the “potential concentration of minority groups.” GX 1078.94. The HUD official urged consideration of alternate sites, especially “scattered sites.”

Id.;

1078.106. In reply, YURA wrote that an “evaluation of family incomes, size, and other criteria indicate that a very well balanced racial mix will result from relocating just our urban renewal relocatees” and that “the fears you express about the creation of a ‘racial ghetto’ will depend largely on the admission practices of the [MHA].” GX 1078.98. Two months later, in November of 1966, HUD formally notified the City that it would take no immediate action on the Hawthorne/Riverdale site and asked for the submission of alternate sites.

See

GX 1078.111.

Later that month, amid public calls by the Chamber of Commerce and the Yonkers Economic Development Corporation for the approval of sites for relocation housing so that the City’s urban renewal plans would not be delayed any further, GX 1078.113, 1078.115, 1078.116, 1078.120, the City Manager, as Chairman of YURA, wrote to the City Council stressing the importance of public housing to the future of urban renewal in the City and “urgently request[ing]” immediate reexamination of

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all the sites in committee as well as consideration of expanding the Hawthorne/River-dale site. GX 1078.118.

At one YURA meeting, City Manager Adler expressed the hope that at least one more site — namely, the Bronx River Road site in East Yonkers — could be approved, but noted that “[ejverytime a site comes up a councilman will say ‘not in my ward.’ ” GX 1078.117. Later in the meeting, it was announced that YURA would undertake its own search for sites. The task was to be handled by a subcommittee of YURA’s Citizens Advisory Committee (“CAC”), who, according to Piantadosi, were “going to war to get sites for us.”

Id.

The CAC Subcommittee’s efforts resulted in a list of nineteen sites scattered throughout the City. GX 1078.124. None, however, was developed for public housing, nor does it appear from the record that any serious study was given to the list. The only effect the list appears to have had was to further publicize the degree of opposition that existed to the placement of public housing in any heavily white area of Yonkers.

The existence of the CAC list first came to public attention after a joint meeting among the MHA, YURA, the Yonkers Commission on Human Rights, and the YURA-CAC, at which City officials debated whether the list should be released to the press. GX 1078.125; 1078.39. According to press accounts, which dubbed the list the “secret renewal sites,” two councilmen, Alfred Del Bello and Jesse Eisen, expressed concern about the pressure that would be brought to bear on councilmen unless the public was educated about the need for site selection on a city-wide basis. GX 1078.125; 1078.126; 1078.128. “[CJouncilmen,” Eisen warned, “will have to have a great deal of intestinal fortitude.” GX 1078.125. Del Bello added that he did not think the City’s councilmen had “sufficiently strong shoulders to consider sites no matter what time of year” it was. Fear was reportedly expressed by several speakers that “the public is not yet ready to accept the federal government’s plan for racial and economic integration on a citywide basis.” Nonetheless, Councilmen Eisen and Chema expressed support for the concept of scattered sites, with Eisen quoted as saying “Let’s not scatter them in Southwest Yonkers.”

Id.

The CAC list was obtained and published by the press a few weeks later, causing, in the words of YURA members, “a great deal of alarm in the community.” GX 1078.133.

The Taxpayers Organization of North East Yonkers invited George Piantadosi, the acting director of YURA, to speak to the group about the CAC list. Instead, Piantadosi wrote to the group, reassuring them that CAC’s role was solely an advisory one, that the consideration of any of the sites was still in early stages, and that a “thorough study” of each was called for and would include consideration of the “attitude of the local community toward accepting public housing.” GX 1078.138. The list of nineteen sites was passed on to the City Manager in January of 1967 with the CAC’s recommendation that five be given further study. GX 1078.135; 1078.136. There is no indication in the record that the CAC’s recommendation was followed or that the list was put to any other use.

On the same day that the CAC list was published, the City Council’s housing committee referred seven sites to the Council— all but three of the remaining ten from the MHA’s original list. GX 1078.129. Two of the sites not referred were East side sites (one on Texas Avenue and another on Sweetfield Circle) that had since been acquired in whole or in part by private developers. GX 1078.130. Six of the sites referred to the Council were in Southwest Yonkers; one (a site on Bronx River Road) was in East Yonkers.

As in previous years, announcement of the sites prompted opposition from civic associations and, with respect to two sites on Garfield and Fillmore Streets (essentially the same RAMP area proposed in 1956), a mass protest rally. GX 1078.144; 1078.-145. The opposition was noted at a YURA meeting, with Planning Director Pistone

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observing that people “all adopt the same attitude: don’t put public housing in my backyard,” and that they were “not too receptive to explanations.” GX 1078.144.

In February of 1967, the City Council held a meeting to vote on the seven sites. As the debate preceding the vote made clear, the Council faced a choice between continued placement of public housing in and around downtown Yonkers, in some of the City’s most heavily minority areas, or acceptance of the concept of scattering public housing throughout the City so as not to reinforce economic and racial segregation. In its votes, the Council chose the former. The worst of the sites in terms of immediate proximity to other projects (a site on Palisade Avenue and Carlisle Place) was rejected, but so too were the two RAMP sites in the overwhelmingly white Nodine Hill area of Southwest Yonkers as well as the only site left on the list that was in East Yonkers (the site on Bronx River Road). Another Southwest site (between Stanley and Riverdale Avenues) was deferred to a future meeting, and two sites on Croton Terrace — a heavily minority area in the Southwest neighborhood known as the Hollow — were approved. GX 1078.151; 1078.152. Two weeks later, the remaining Southwest site (also in an area with a high minority population) was also approved. GX 1078.155. The three sites approved were the same ones that had been recommended ten months earlier by the Council’s housing committee but vigorously opposed on the grounds that they presented serious relocation problems and would lead to a further overconcentration of public housing in one area of the City.

During the debate preceding the Council’s vote, it was noted that the federal authorities were urging “scattered site” housing, and that the City’s urban renewal funds depended upon producing acceptable sites for relocation housing. GX 1078.152. Several councilmen, as well as the newly elected Mayor, James O’Rourke, spoke in favor of scattered site housing generally and the Bronx River Road site in particular.

Id.;

Tr. 790-91 (Wilson); Tr. 7227-30 (King). One councilman stated that the site “does seem to fit what everyone has been looking for,” while another declared “we have an obligation to take advantage of it.” GX 1078.152. The ward councilmen for both the Bronx River Road and RAMP sites strongly opposed their selection, however, and the final vote on the sites (taken after a recess during which the Council went into closed session) was eight to five against the Bronx River Road site and eleven to two against the RAMP.

Id.;

Tr. 7229-30 (King).

A few weeks after the February vote, the City’s Congressional Representative, Richard Ottinger, publicly attacked the sites that had been approved, contending that they would “promote racial and social segregation.” GX 1078.158. In May of 1967, HUD notified the City that it would not approve the sites that had been submitted, GX 1078.163, with that notification, the City’s Stage II urban renewal project officially came to a halt.

The Nature and Effect of the Recurring Pattern of Public Opposition

There is little room for doubt that the pattern of community opposition described above significantly affected the City’s site selection for public housing. Despite repeated statements by City officials about the urgency of the City’s need for public housing, nine years passed before the City approved a sufficient number of sites to make use of a single year’s allocation of public housing units. During that time, the City more than once risked the loss of its funding allocation, and in any event, forfeited the opportunity to apply for additional allocations of federal assistance. Nor did the pattern of delays and disapprovals cease even when HUD made clear that the City’s urban renewal programs would not go forward unless acceptable sites were approved and submitted.

In addition, it is clear that the delays were not occasioned by a lack of suitable sites. The minutes of agency meetings repeatedly quote city officials and other on-the-scene observers as stating that the

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chief source of the City’s site selection difficulties was community opposition — a view that is corroborated by the record of approvals and disapprovals for the years in question.

City Council approval was rarely given in the face of organized opposition to a proposed site by area residents or civic associations. Indeed, over the course of eighteen years and the consideration of dozens of sites, it was given only twice. The first such approval (a site on Frederic Street in 1951) took fourteen months to obtain, carried by a single vote, and became a campaign issue in the next election. For reasons unspecified in the record, the site was subsequently abandoned.

See

GX 1058.

The second and only other site which the record shows to have been approved despite organized community opposition is the site of Loehr Court, a 108-unit senior citizen housing project on Western Avenue in Southwest Yonkers (one of the three sites approved by the Council in 1958). The Park Hill Residents Association sent a letter to the City Council announcing its unanimous opposition to the Western Avenue site, and according to the testimony of former ward councilman William Tully, some 300 residents of his ward attended the site selection meeting. Former councilman Tully testified that he had been “irritated” to have been “put on the spot” in front of his constituents, and he suggested that at least part of the reason for his failure to persuade the Council to reject the site was the fact that he was a Republican on a heavily Democratic Council. Tully Dep. 14-15, 17, 25-26.

Whatever the reason, the Western Avenue site clearly was the exception rather than the rule. With respect to nine of the twelve other sites approved by the Council for public housing during the eighteen years in question, there is no evidence whatever of organized opposition by area residents or civic associations.

With respect to two (Stanley/Riverdale and Hawthorne/Riverdale), there is some indication that the sites may have been opposed in the past, but no evidence of current opposition. With respect to the last (Lake Avenue), opposition arose only after the site had been approved, and the site was subsequently abandoned. In contrast, the numerous sites that

were

the subject of organized community opposition were either disapproved by the Council, referred to and left in Committee, or for other reasons, never the subject of formal action by the Council.

Plaintiffs suggest that the reason for the City Council’s extreme responsiveness to community opposition was the ward system under which the City Council operated, and in particular what plaintiffs contend was an unofficial “councilmatic veto power” held by ward councilmen over matters of importance affecting their wards. While a description of the phenomenon as a “veto power” suggests a greater formality and certainty than appears to have obtained, it is indeed clear from the evidence for these, as well as subsequent years, that the support of the ward councilman generally was, and was perceived to be, critical to a site’s prospects for approval by the City Council. Numerous past and present City officials, including councilmen themselves, testified to the existence of a strong tendency to defer to the views of the ward councilman. Alfred Del Bello, for example, who was a councilman for 1966 to 1969 and Mayor of Yonkers from 1970 to 1973, testified that the ward councilman was “normally allowed to lead the issue” in matters affecting his ward, and that as a result City officials tended to consult the ward councilman to determine whether or not his support could be obtained for a project. Tr.

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1178-79. Without that support, according to Del Bello, “it was usually much more difficult to get approvals out of the Council.”

Id.; see also

Tr. 1180-86; 1192-93. Walter Webdale, the Director of YURA from 1967 to 1971, likewise acknowledged that it was “difficult to conceive” of getting Council approval for a subsidized housing site without having the support of the ward councilman, and Morton Yulish, the City’s Director of Development from 1971 to 1974, characterized that fact as an “unwritten rule” which was “very clear to all who worked with the City Council.” Web-dale Dep. 186; Tr. 858-60 (Yulish);

see also

Tr. 987-88 (Iannacone); 1666-70 (O’Rourke); 1869 (Schneider); 2813-14 (Arcaro).

In addition, numerous councilmembers acknowledged that their own position with respect to sites proposed for subsidized housing in their wards was, in turn, strongly influenced by the views of their constituents. Some explained it on the basis of a belief that people had a “fairly good right to determine” what they would see when they looked out their windows.

See, e.g.,

Tr. 1676-78 (O’Rourke). Others suggested, more pragmatically, that they viewed their prospects for re-election as depending upon it.

See, e.g.,

Cola Dep. 80-81; Tr. 992-93 (Iannacone);

cf.

Tr. 1874-77 (Schneider); Webdale Dep. 484. And there is abundant evidence that their constituents encourage that view.

See, e.g.,

Tr. 1197-98 (Del Bello); P-I 106-26 (GX 1063.13).

It is true, as the City has emphasized, that a number of the sites rejected during these years were disapproved by the Planning Board as well as the City Council, or were never presented to the Council after their disapproval by the Planning Board. But even with respect to those sites, there is reason to conclude that community opposition, and its effect on the City Council, played a major role in their rejection. With respect to the influence of a Planning Board disapproval on a subsequent City Council vote, the record suggests that the Council’s reliance on the views of its Planning Board was selective. When a Planning Board disapproval was accompanied by community opposition (as it was, for example, in the case of sites on St. Nick’s Oval and Bronx River Road), the City Council tended to likewise disapprove the site. When a Planning Board disapproval was not accompanied by community opposition, however, (as in the case of the School Street site in 1958), the City Council was willing to override even a strong vote of disapproval by the Planning Board.

Moreover, the Planning Board itself was not immune from lobbying by area residents or their representatives. At the first sign of community opposition, a council committee was formed to meet with site selection agencies and to “let the public know that the Council [had] an interest” in site selection. GX 1204.4. Ward councilmen also regularly appeared at site discussion sessions of the MHA and the City Planning Board or wrote to the agencies to report on the reaction of the neighboring community to a proposed site.

See, e.g.,

GX 1058.36; 1204.4; 1204.13; 1059.6; 1063.8; 1078.15. In addition, area residents and civic associations also contacted the Planning Board and other site selection agencies directly. Copies of resolutions and petitions in opposition were routinely sent to the Planning Board, and groups also appeared in person to speak against particular sites.

See, e.g.,

GX 1058.6; 1059.1; 1059.7-1059.9; 1060.14; 1060.38; 1069.10; 1078.17-1078.19.

To be sure, the record contains evidence that planning criteria — that is, factors such as cost, zoning, the physical suitability of the site, future plans for the area in general or the site in particular, availability and adequacy of public facilities such as schools, shopping, transportation, etc.— were regularly discussed by the MHA and the Planning Board and sometimes stated as the basis for their decisions. The record also contains abundant evidence, however, that these agencies were acutely aware of the requirement of Council approval, and of the unlikeliness that the approval would be forthcoming if there was significant community opposition to a site.

See, e.g.,

GX 1059.2; 1059.4; 1059.14; 1062.1; 1062.4;

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1063.4; 1063.8; 1063.10; 1063.17; 1064.19; 1064.20; 1078.110; 1078.117; 1204.7; 1204.-18. Moreover, with respect to some sites (for example, the Bronx River Road and Texas/Georgia Avenue sites proposed in 1965) no reasons apart from community opposition were offered at the time of their disapproval by the Planning Board. GX 1078.28.

In addition, the

pattern

of Planning Board approvals and disapprovals further suggests that the presence or absence of community opposition was an important factor in the decisionmaking process. With respect to East side sites, most notably, the Planning Board’s decisions (like the City Council’s) follow a general pattern in which the sites that were disapproved were ones that prompted opposition from area residents and civic associations,

see

GX 1059 (Coyne Park, Raybrook Road, Midland Avenue); GX 1060 (St. Nick’s Oval, Ridgeview Avenue); GX 1078 (Bronx River Road, Sweetfield Circle, Texas/Georgia Avenues), and those that were approved were ones for which there is no evidence of such opposition.

See

GX 1063 (old School 1 site, Martin Ray Place). The single exception to the pattern was the Smart Avenue site, which Planning Director Pistone characterized as “ideal,” and which the Planning Board approved notwithstanding the objections of the ward councilwoman. But the site ceased to be an exception when it came up before the Council itself, where it was rejected.

The sites that generally escaped community opposition, and thus successfully emerged from the site selection process, are heavily concentrated in the downtown area of Southwest Yonkers.

See

Appendix A. Indeed, more than half of the total public housing units built during those eighteen years (713 units out of a total of 1,365) were concentrated in two adjacent Southwest projects (Schlobohm Houses and Walsh Gardens) which in turn were only a few blocks away in one direction from the 800 units of public housing contained in Mulford Gardens and Cottage Place Gardens (the two projects built in the 1940’s), and a few blocks away in the other direction from the 278 public housing units contained in Calgano Homes (the School Street project approved in 1958). Thus, by 1963, more than 80% of the City’s existing or planned public housing was located within a several-block area of Southwest Yonkers. Yet, despite this extreme concentration of public housing units in one area of the City, the additional sites that were approved in 1966 and 1967 (but rejected by HUD) were all located near that same area.

The City has sought to explain this extreme concentration as the result of a plan to use public housing to rebuild the Southwest Yonkers. In this regard, the City places chief reliance upon a series of Master Plan Reports published by its Planning Department in the late 1950’s and 1960’s. C-1504; C-1505; C-1506. Those reports, however, do little more than confirm an undisputed fact: that Southwest Yonkers was the area in greatest need of urban renewal. The reports in no respect recommend concentrating the City’s public housing in and around the downtown area of Southwest Yonkers. In fact, the Yonkers Central Business District (CBD) Study, published in June of 1959, expressed concern about the “lower family income concentrations in the immediate periphery of the CBD.” C-1503. And the Land Use and Community Facilities Plan, published in June of 1961, specifically called for a mix of income levels to be represented in the residential portion of the Southwest’s redevelopment. C-1505.

The City has suggested that its planners viewed public housing as the only mechanism available to the City to initiate redevelopment on slum clearance sites and thus pursued a plan of using public housing as the “seed investment” to attract the other development contemplated by the Master Plan. But that argument is not supported by the record.

Neither the Planning Department’s recommendations, nor its approvals, were limited to sites in Southwest Yonkers. Indeed, the first and only consistent proponents of the view that public housing

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should be restricted to the “blighted areas” of Southwest Yonkers were not City officials at all, but civic associations protesting sites that had been proposed in their own neighborhoods.

See, e.g.,

GX 1058.6; 1058.102; 1069.11. In contrast, the Planning Department’s first, and apparently only, detailed position paper on public housing for this period — a “proposed methodology for site selection” issued in May of 1950 — targeted neither the Southwest nor areas of blight as the only appropriate sites for public housing. GX 1058.16. In fact, one of the specific sites recommended in the report — a site at Palmer Road and Stratton Street — was in an unblighted (and overwhelmingly white) area of Central Yonkers just west of the Saw Mill River Parkway.

Id.; see also

GX 1225.41; C-1805A. For reasons that are not apparent from the record, the site was never pursued.

Nor were many other of the Planning Department’s initial or subsequent recommendations adopted. As noted earlier, for example, the 1950 report recommended that public housing projects be limited to 250 units so as to “reduce their impact” on the surrounding area — a recommendation that was abandoned by City officials when it became apparent that the City was suffering from a shortage of “politically suitable” sites which was at least as serious as its need for public housing.

Cf, e.g.,

GX 1062.4. Likewise disregarded was the Planning Board’s strong opposition to the selection of sites that would prevent construction of a proposed arterial route which the planners considered to be critical to the eventual revitalization of the City’s CBD.

Nor, certainly, can the sites selected in 1965 and 1966 be explained on the basis of any plan to use public housing to revitalize the Southwest. The chief criterion for sites during those years was “universally accepted” to be that the sites be vacant so as to add to the City’s supply of relocation housing and avoid any further reduction or loss of federal urban renewal assistance. GX 1078.67;

see also

HOUSING III.D

supra.

Moreover, Alfred Del Bello, one of the City officials closely involved in those events, acknowledged at trial (as did other City officials involved in the events of subsequent years) that his constituents equated public housing with minorities, and that race was “definitely” a factor in much of the opposition that arose during the site selection process. Tr. 1194-97 (Del Bello);

see also

Tr. 7237-38 (King).

The evidence for the years preceding 1965 is decidedly less dramatic. But even with respect to those years, there is considerable evidence suggesting that race was at work in the sustained community opposition that existed to the placement of public housing in any but a few areas of the City. As an initial matter, the pattern of opposition itself strongly suggests a racial influence. Sites proposed in East or Northwest Yonkers, or the heavily white areas of Southwest Yonkers, almost invariably prompted strong community opposition. Sites proposed in the more heavily minority areas generally did not.

In addition, the exceptions to the pattern tend to reinforce, rather than weaken, the inference to be drawn. The few sites in white areas that prompted little or no opposition were for senior-citizen or middle-income (Mitchell-Lama) housing, whose occupants were more likely to be heavily white.

See, e.g.,

Tr. 878-80 (Yulish); 994-95 (Iannacone). Indeed, the distinction between low-income and middle-income housing is particularly well illustrated by the remark of a City official recorded in the minutes of a YURA meeting in 1966. Amid a discussion of the need to prompt the City Council to take action on the public housing sites that were still buried in committee, George Piantadosi observed that it was now possible to place public housing tenants in Mitchell-Lama units, and that the way to get the Council to produce sites for public housing was to tell it that they planned to do so. GX 1078.44;

see also

GX 1078.23; 1078.66.

To be sure, there is little evidence of overtly racial statements by opponents of public housing. And former councilman Edward O’Neill, who strongly and successfully opposed three sites proposed in his east side ward in 1953, testified that he believed race played no role in site selections because “nothing was ever expressed for the record to indicate that it did play a role.” O’Neill Dep. 102. The former councilman went on to acknowledge, however, that racial opposition was “certainly ... nothing anybody would put into words.”

Id.

at 189.

Nor is direct evidence of a racial influence wholly lacking. At least one group of citizens expressed concern in 1958 about having to “absorb the overflow from Harlem or Puerto Rico.” P-I 106-26 (GX 1063.13). And during at least one Planning Board meeting that same year the Secre

*1312

tary-Director of the MHA expressly stated that some of the sites under discussion could be expected to prompt objections on grounds of race. GX 1063.8.

Moreover, beginning with the very first sites proposed, a common theme in the objections has been concern about declining property values, the “deterioration” of the neighborhood, the undesirable “element” attracted by public housing, and insistence that public housing properly belonged in “blighted areas,” not “residential communities.”

See

HOUSING III.B through III.D

supra.

Such objections in and of themselves may not be sufficient to indicate that a racial influence was at work. However, when those objections are combined with a pattern of opposition that also suggests a racial influence, it becomes significantly harder to accept the argument that the concerns were purely economic.

It becomes harder still when, as here, there is also evidence that although Yonkers had, until the mid-1960’s, a relatively small and stable minority population, GX 1225.1, it was very much a racially divided city. In this regard, it is noteworthy that Runyon Heights was not created or maintained as a black enclave merely by chance or “associational preferences” that were unrelated to racial discrimination. According to the City’s long-time Planning Director, Philip Pistone, the neighborhood was founded on a large tract of land owned by a state senator who regularly brought busloads of residents from Harlem there for weekend picnics, during which he would auction off parcels of the land. Tr. 9508-09 (Pistone). As the neighborhood developed, any contact with the overwhelmingly white Homefield area immediately to the north was severely discouraged when the Homefield Neighborhood Association purchased and maintained a four-foot strip of land as a barrier between the streets of the two neighborhoods. Tr. 2740-42 (Downes);

see also

SCHOOLS IV.A.3.a

infra.

And the objections raised by Runyon Heights residents to the first site proposed there for public housing in 1956 make clear that the area was perceived to be the only one open to blacks in East Yonkers.

See

GX 1060.12, 1060.16. While this history does not, of course, warrant any general presumptions about the subsequent acts of City officials, it does markedly increase the significance of the fact that the only site selected for family public housing which is not in Southwest Yonkers is in Runyon Heights.

Similarly noteworthy are the circumstances surrounding the construction of Cottage Place Gardens, the City’s second public housing project. In apparent response to concerns expressed in the late 1930’s by community leaders about the difficulties blacks were encountering in obtaining decent and affordable housing in the private market, the City resolved to build a public housing project “for Negroes” and set about finding a suitable site on which to do so.

See

GX 1053. Various sites were rejected on the ground that the level of minority concentration there was not sufficiently high, and the site eventually selected in 1940 was in one of the most heavily minority areas of Southwest Yonkers. GX 1225.41; P-I 360.

The significance of Cottage Place Gardens is twofold. First, the circumstances surrounding its construction suggest that private market discrimination played a major role in maintaining the pockets of minority concentration which existed in Southwest Yonkers through the mid-1960’s (when those pockets of concentration began to expand significantly), and that City officials were well aware of that discrimination. And in this regard, what is suggested by Cottage Place Gardens is decisively confirmed by the credible testimony of various Yonkers residents, as well as that of the City’s former Director of Relocation, and by contemporaneous City documents describing the extreme difficulty that minorities had in finding relocation housing when they were displaced by urban renewal.

See, e.g.,

Tr. 428-56 (Smith); 527-29 (Gibson); 2333-43 (Stores); 1933-95 (Trommer); GX 1068.1; 1068.3-1068.4; 1068.11;

see also

GX 1068.5.

In addition, with respect to the actions of City officials, the history of Cottage Place Gardens illustrates what would otherwise

*1313

be merely a matter of common sense: that City officials were fully capable of comparing the relative minority concentration of various parts of the City, and of the Southwest, and then choosing a site that would best preserve existing patterns of segregation.

Once again, it bears emphasis that the history of Cottage Place Gardens does not, of course, automatically taint any subsequent actions taken by the City. However, with respect to the extreme degree to which the City’s subsequent site selections in fact conformed to community pressures, and the extreme degree to which those pressures in fact followed a racially identifiable pattern, the history of Cottage Place Gardens — together with the other evidence presented regarding private market discrimination and its acknowledged effect on minority relocation opportunities — strongly diminishes any likelihood that those phenomena were merely coincidental and unrelated to an intent to preserve existing patterns of segregation.

IV. THE RIVERVIEW PERIOD

In sharp contrast to the preceding eighteen years, the period from 1968 to 1972 was a highly productive one for the development of subsidized housing in Yonkers. Sites were approved for fifteen subsidized housing projects for families (totalling 2,647 housing units) and two subsidized housing projects for senior citizens (total-ling 290 housing units). Most of the sites were approved during the years of 1970 and 1971. All seventeen sites were in Southwest Yonkers.

It is clear from the record that this productivity was attributable in large part to a series of conscious decisions on the part of City officials to concentrate, at least for the present, on sites which were “politically feasible.” It is equally clear that sites outside of Southwest Yonkers remained politically infeasible because of continuing opposition to subsidized housing on the part of area residents and civic associations — an opposition based, at least in significant part, upon fear of an influx of minorities into what were (and remain today) overwhelmingly white neighborhoods.

Overview of Projects Approved

During the years in question, City officials largely abandoned reliance on the construction of public housing as a relocation resource, and turned instead to the subsidized housing programs known as § 221(d)(3) B.M.I.R. and § 236 housing. Under these programs the housing was constructed, owned, and operated by not-for-profit sponsors rather than a local housing agency. The sponsors received a low-interest mortgage that was subsidized and

*1314

often insured by HUD, and were required, in return, to observe rental and income-limit schedules established by HUD. The guidelines were targeted for moderate-income households, but additional rental subsidies were available to make some or all of the units accessible to low-income households as well. Since the projects were required to be self-sustaining, tax abatements from the local government were generally needed in order to make the projects financially feasible.

All fifteen of the projects for families approved during this period were § 221(d)(3) B.M.I.R. or § 236 projects. Eight were sponsored by private non-profit or limited-profit groups; the remaining seven were sponsored by the New York State Urban Development Corporation (“UDC”), a public benefit corporation created by the New York State legislature in 1968 to participate in housing, commercial, and industrial development throughout the state.

The seven UDC projects were constructed pursuant to written agreements (“Memoranda of Understanding”) between the City and the UDC, which were authorized by the City Council and executed on behalf of the City by the City Manager. Five of the seven projects (totalling 1,201 units of housing) were constructed pursuant to a single Memorandum of Understanding authorized and executed in July of 1970. The five projects are Frazier Homes (21 units) at the intersection of Warburton and Lamartine Avenues; the Dorado (188 units) at the intersection of Warburton and Ashburton Avenues; Whitney Young Manor (195 units) near the intersection of Nepperhan and Ashburton Avenues; and Riverview I (454 units) and II (343 units) on Riverdale Avenue in the City’s Stage II urban renewal area. The sixth UDC project, the 300-unit Seven Pines, was constructed pursuant to a Memorandum of Understanding approved in June of 1971 and is located on Glenwood Avenue at the foot of Trevor Park. The seventh and final UDC project, the 310-unit Parkledge Apartments, was constructed pursuant to a Memorandum of Understanding approved in June of 1972 and is located on Yonkers Avenue, immediately west of the Saw Mill River Parkway.

The eight privately sponsored § 221(d)(3) and § 236 projects for families, which were largely the result of recruiting efforts by the director and staff of YURA,

see

HOUSING IV.C.l

infra,

were constructed pursuant to City Council resolutions which granted the sponsor a substantial tax abatement in return for an agreement to give preference in both initial and subsequent rentals to persons displaced by urban renewal projects. The first such resolution was passed in January of 1968 for Jefferson Terrace, a 64-unit project between Highland Avenue and Jefferson Street. GX 1079.25. The next was Highland Terrace (96 units), a few blocks to the south, approved in July of 1968, C-453, followed by 10 Orchard Street (an 8-unit rehabilitation) in April of 1970, GX 1147.10; Messiah Baptist (130 units) on Highland Terrace in May of 1970, C-552; Waverly Arms (28 units) on Waverly Street in October of 1970, C-561; 164-170 Buena Vista Avenue (a 12-unit rehabilitation) in March of 1971, C-534; Cromwell Towers (317 units) at Locust Hill Avenue and Cromwell Place in July of 1971, C-747; and Jackson Terrace (181 units) on Riverdale Avenue south of Vark Street in November of 1971, C-509.

The remaining two projects approved during this period were senior citizen projects. Flynn Manor, a 140-unit public housing project on Riverdale Avenue at Post Street, was approved by the City Council in June of 1970, C-102; and Father Finían Sullivan Towers, a 150-unit Mitchell-Lama project, received preliminary approval in November of 1970, GX 1099.11, and final approval in October of 1973. GX 1099.19.

The Continuing Opposition to Subsidized Housing in the City’s Heavily White Neighborhoods

For sixteen of these seventeen projects, there is little or no evidence of community opposition prior to the project’s approval by the City Council. Only Parkledge — the final UDC project — appears to have encountered any significant community resistance. There is, however, abundant evidence of

*1315

continuing community opposition to subsidized housing in certain areas of Yonkers. The opposition is, as before, evident in the heavily white areas of the City, particularly those east of the Saw Mill River Parkway. The sites approved by the City are, without exception, west of the Saw Mill River Parkway, and with three exceptions, in the more heavily minority areas of the Southwest. GX 1225.44. The exceptions are the two senior citizens projects (both of which appear to have been heavily white since opening, C-1650), and Parkledge, which is located immediately west of the Saw Mill River Parkway, and which was chosen in response to insistence by HUD that the City select a site outside of areas of minority concentration.

As before, there is relatively little evidence that the residents of the City’s heavily white areas expressly mentioned race as a reason for opposing subsidized housing in those areas.

But see

HOUSING IV.C.3

infra.

Nonetheless, there can be no serious doubt that the opposition was, on the whole, racially influenced. Numerous former city officials — including those directly involved in the selection of sites for subsidized housing during this period — acknowledged at trial that they themselves believed the opposition they encountered was indeed based, at least in part, upon race.

See

Tr. 1193-97, 1378-79 (Del Bello); 875-80; 1066-67 (Yulish); Webdale Dep. 487-88; 497-98; Tr. 983-86, 994-95 (Iannacone); 2792-94, (Arcaro); 1861-67 (Schneider).

As noted earlier, former East side councilman and Mayor Alfred Del Bello, testified that his constituents equated subsidized housing with minorities, Tr. 1197, and that “race was definitely a consideration in many of the demonstrations and visible opposition we had.” Tr. 1194.

Walter Webdale, the Director of YURA from the spring of 1967 through the fall of 1971, testified more guardedly but to the same effect. Webdale acknowledged that the high level of emotion which prevailed at public meetings on subsidized housing was characteristic of issues that are “racially tinged.” Webdale Dep. 487-88; 497-98. “At many meetings, there was no logic left to the meeting,” Webdale explained, “and so one would have to assume there was something more than the size of the street, the water, the sewer, etc.”

Id.

at 498. Webdale also testified that there was “tremendous fear” about subsidized housing in Yonkers, which was overcome in “some areas” but not in others,

id.

at 336-37; 562, and he cited the approval of the Parkledge project in 1972 as an example of one case in which that fear was overcome.

Id.

at 338.

Morton Yulish, who was the Administrator of the City’s Department of Development from the fall of 1971 to early 1974, and who in 1971 and 1972 led the efforts to obtain City approval for a site outside areas of minority concentration, testified that he encountered intense opposition to subsidized housing in East Yonkers; that he believed the opposition to be based, at least in part, upon race; and that he shared his views on the subject with Mayor Del Bello and City Manager Seymour Scher. Tr. 1066-67. Yulish testified that the issues raised “on the surface” were generally whether tax abatements should be granted outside of urban renewal areas; whether the “residential character” of single-family neighborhoods should be changed; and whether the federal government should be permitted to control what would happen in the City’s neighborhoods.

Id.

at 875. However, Yulish considered those issues often to be “smokescreens” for underlying racial fears,

id.

at 875-80, and he testified that at many meetings, the issue of race was “very thick in the air.”

Id.

at 1066-67. “The bottom line,” according to Yulish was that “there was no way that you could ... get public support, and then after the fact get councilman support, to build large-family, predominantly black assisted housing on the other side of the [Saw Mill River] Parkway.” Tr. 879-80.

Both Yulish and Gregory Arcaro, a planner with the City from 1968 to 1970 and from 1972 to 1980, further testified that many of those who lived in East Yonkers had moved there from the Bronx and other areas of New York City, and had expressed strong fears that subsidized housing would lead to the same “deterioration” which they had sought to escape. Tr. 2792-93 (Area

*1316

ro); 1064-67 (Yulish);

see also

McLaughlin Dep. 77-78. In addition, there is evidence of a widespread belief that part of the reason for the sharp rise in the City’s minority population from the mid-1960’s on was an influx of minorities displaced by the urban renewal that had taken place in White Plains.

See, e.g.,

Tr. 841-45 (Yulish); 1728-33 (O’Rourke). As a result, according to Yulish, some people in Yonkers equated urban renewal with “large infusions of minorities into a city ill-equipped to cope with them,” Tr. 843, and they were uninterested in pursuing urban renewal unless they could “get even” by sending the people displaced by urban renewal back to White Plains.

Id.

David Bogdanoff, a builder who worked closely with City officials on a number of subsidized housing projects during these years, characterized racially influenced opposition to subsidized housing as simply a “fact of life at that time” in most predominantly white communities. Tr. 10,224. Bogdanoff testified that there was a “tremendous fear” in East Yonkers (as in most predominantly white communities) that placing subsidized housing there would result in an invasion of minorities, and that “of course” it influenced where he could build. Tr. 10,224-25;

see also

10,197-99; Logue Dep. 112. In fact, Bogdanoff volunteered that if he had attempted to tell the residents of any heavily white community that construction of subsidized housing need not result in an invasion of minorities, he “would have been howled down with laughter.” Tr. 10,197.

The Pattern of Opposition and Apparent Acquiescence

The pattern of sites selected during this period, and the circumstances under which they were selected, taken together with the testimony described above, strongly suggests that City officials likewise came to view racially influenced opposition to subsidized housing in East Yonkers as a “fact of life,” and came to view acquiescence in that fact of life as the price of urban renewal in Yonkers.

The City’s Campaign to Produce Privately Sponsored Projects

When Walter Webdale arrived in Yonkers in April of 1967 as the first permanent director of the Yonkers Urban Renewal Agency, he found the City’s Stage II urban renewal project at a standstill due to an inability to provide relocation housing. For the past eighteen years, community opposition to public housing had seriously hindered site selection and had effectively ruled out sites in all but the most heavily minority areas of the City. Two months before Webdale’s arrival, amid typically strong community opposition to several sites proposed in East Yonkers, the City Council had rejected all proposed sites except for several located in the heavily minority downtown area of Southwest Yonkers. Those sites, in turn, were rejected by HUD one month after Webdale’s arrival.

See,

HOUSING III.D

supra.

Webdale’s first task thus became the removal of the “road block” that the lack of relocation housing presented to the Stage II urban renewal project, GX 1079.4, and he responded by undertaking an extensive campaign to bring about the construction of § 221(d)(3) and § 236 projects.

See, e.g.,

GX 1079.8; 1079.17; 1079.26; 1080.14; 1081.8; 1082.1; 1086.6; 1207.3; Webdale Dep. 72, 89-90; Tr. 10,182-83 (Bogdanoff). Webdale and his staff at YURA located sites, solicited sponsors, and provided the sponsors with a broad range of technical and political support, including assistance in preparing applications to HUD,

see, e.g.,

GX 1079.18; 1082.2; 1083.9; and submissions to the City Council,

see, e.g.,

GX 1079.34; 1079.53; 1083.32; planning and construction design,

see, e.g.,

GX 1079.52; 1083.11; 1084.5; and meeting with federal, city and school officials,

see, e.g.,

GX 1079.-45; 1083.31; 1083.32; 1084.1.

Although Webdale looked at sites outside of South

*1317

west Yonkers, and although his office publicly stated that projects were expected to be built “on scattered sites in various parts of the city,” GX 1079.61a, Webdale limited his efforts at recruiting sponsors for § 221(d)(3) and § 236 projects to Southwest Yonkers.

See, e.g.,

Webdale Dep. 56-58, 137-38, 243-44.

So limited, site selection and approval proved far less difficult than in previous years. Although the minority and other community groups continued to press for scattered-site housing,

see

HOUSING IV.D.3

infra,

and although concerns continued to be raised about the increasing concentration of subsidized housing in the Southwest,

see

HOUSING IV.D.4 and 5

supra,

the sites designated for the § 221(d)(3) and § 236 projects prompted little apparent opposition from area residents (indeed, some were actively supported by area residents,

see

HOUSING IV.D.3

infra ),

and they were approved without incident by the City Council.

The Candeub & Fleissig Survey and the City’s 1970 Memorandum of Understanding with the UDC

In 1969, while the campaign to produce privately sponsored projects was underway in the Southwest, a citywide vacant land survey, jointly commissioned by the City, the Yonkers Chamber of Commerce, and the UDC, was made public. The result, as in previous years, was immediate and apparently effective opposition from the residents of East and Northwest Yonkers. The survey was summarily abandoned, and sites in the downtown area of Southwest Yonkers were designated soon thereafter for five subsidized housing projects (total-ling 1,200 units) to be sponsored by the UDC.

The survey in question arose as part of the City’s efforts to persuade the Otis Elevator Company, one of the City’s largest employers, to remain in Yonkers. Otis had indicated that it needed either to expand its existing facilities or relocate elsewhere, and in 1968 the City asked the newly created UDC for assistance in its efforts to retain Otis. C-579.

Among the areas in which the City sought assistance was in the relocation of some 1,000 predominantly minority families from the riverfront area designated for the Otis expansion.

Id.;

GX 1096.47. To that end, the UDC, the City, and the Yonkers Chamber of Commerce hired the consulting firm of Candeub & Fleissig to identify “available sites within the City for the construction of low and moderate income housing ... [with] special attention ... to the potential development of open land sites.” C-592.

In May of 1969, Candeub & Fleissig produced a list of ninety-eight vacant sites in Yonkers, and a ranking of those sites according to their feasibility for the construction of subsidized housing. GX 1096.50; P-I 150-80. Twenty-two of the ninety-eight sites were in Southwest Yonkers; the remaining seventy-six were scattered throughout East and Northwest Yonkers. GX 1225.43. With the assistance of Planning Director Philip Pistone, eleven sites were designated for further study. Tr. 9768, 9872 (Pistone); GX 1096.60.

Word of the Candeub & Fleissig survey quickly reached the City Council. Alfred Del Bello, who was at that time the Democratic candidate for Mayor as well as the tenth ward councilman, called upon Walter Webdale “to supply our local news media with a map of all proposed sites or an explanation of why they are being kept secret.” GX 1096.56.

On June 5, the local press published a description of eleven sites, and reported that the list had been obtained from a map in YURA’s offices which bore the legend “Sites architecturally feasible for low and middle income housing.” GX 1096.60. Four of the sites were in, or on the border of, Southwest Yonkers; the remaining seven were spread across Northern Yonkers. GX 1225.43; 1096.60.

Publication of the list created an uproar in Yonkers.

See, e.g.,

Tr. 9870 (Pistone); 1703 (O’Rourke), GX 1096.98. Adding to the concern was the knowledge that the UDC’s state charter gave it the power to condemn land and override local zoning or

*1318

dinances, thus potentially removing control over site selection from local bodies such as the City Council. Tr. 1703 (O’Rourke).

On June 10, Mayor James O’Rourke issued a statement in response to “recent articles in the press relating to ‘scattered site housing,’ stimulated by public officials for unworthy political reasons and calculated to pander to public fear and agitation.” GX 1096.63. The Mayor emphasized the importance of the Otis expansion project to Yonkers, and explained that “[a]s in all projects such as these, to break the bottleneck of initial relocation, several sites of decent housing will be required outside the project areas.”

Id.

The Mayor added, however, that no site proposals had, as yet, been made, and indicated that in determining site feasibility, “profound consideration” would be given to “maintaining the integrity and character of neighborhoods”; “maintaining the integrity of property values”; and “preserving the integrity of needed parks and recreation lands.”

Id.

The Mayor closed his statement with the assurance that public hearings and discussions would be held before any sites were selected.

Id.

A petition in opposition to the sites located in Northeast Yonkers was sent to the Mayor, the City Council, and the Planning Board. GX 1096.65. The grounds for opposition listed in the petition were that subsidized housing projects would have a detrimental effect on property values and “could blight the areas”; would violate existing zoning laws; would take away needed park and recreational lands; and would overtax school and transportation facilities.

Id.

The petition called for “public hearings ... on notice” before any action was taken on the sites, and declared in closing that:

It is reliably reported that these sites and the others mentioned in The Herald Statesman of June 5, 1969, are part of a proposed program for use of state funds to transfer N.Y. City residents into suburbs. If that is advisable it could be accomplished better by not creating conflict with or downgrading existing established residential areas.

Id.

A meeting was held on June 12 between City officials and the UDC. The following day, the press reported that according to Mayor O’Rourke, the UDC had said that it would refrain from imposing specific sites on Yonkers but would “pull out” of the renewal project unless “scattered sites” were selected. GX 1096.66.

Two days later, some 500 residents of the fifth ward in East Yonkers appeared at a meeting with City officials to protest the sites identified in their area. GX 1096.71; Tr. 1711 (O’Rourke). According to press accounts, the City officials in attendance included fifth ward councilman Andrew O’Rourke; Mayor O’Rourke; and Mayoral candidate Del Bello. All three sought to reassure the audience that the matter of site selection would be given careful study by the City Council, and that use of the UDC’s power to override zoning laws would be resisted.

Id.

Del Bello, in particular, called upon the UDC to leave the selection of sites to the City Council in order to “put the citizens’ minds at ease.”

Id.

The meeting also resulted in the formation of a Citizens Committee, led by Councilman O’Rourke, to study the sites identified in the Candeub & Fleissig study.

On June 17, the UDC sent a telegram denying that it had threatened to pull out of the renewal project if scattered housing sites were not selected and emphasizing that “only upon the City’s recommendation and request” would UDC become involved in construction housing anywhere within the City of Yonkers. GX 1096.74.

Several days later, Mayoral candidate Del Bello also publicly disputed the May- or’s version of the June 12th meeting, saying that in fact the UDC had offered to conform to the City’s wishes. GX 1096.78. Del Bello further criticized the Mayor’s “divisive attitude,” and suggested that to move the City forward, “we must stop threatening the people and start understanding and implementing their wishes.”

Id.

*1319

Del Bello offered as alternatives to scattered site housing the acquisition of surplus land along the arterials then being constructed; leased relocation housing in existing structures; acquisition of parcels made vacant by fire and demolitions of substandard buildings; and the use of the “checkerboard strategy” to relocate individuals within an urban renewal area. GX 1096.100.

On July 10, a meeting was held among the City Council, representatives of the UDC, the Yonkers Economic Development Corporation (“YEDC”) (a local business group), and the UDC’s Citizens Advisory Committee (“CAC”) to discuss sites for relocation housing. GX 1096.89. According to press accounts, twelve sites were proposed by the YEDC as possible sites for relocation housing, “touching off a passionate debate over racism.”

Id.

Three of the five “primary” sites were reported to be located “deep in Yonkers’ ghetto areas” and were criticized as such by the CAC Chairman, the Rev. William Gallagher; Vice Chairman Kenneth Skinner; and CAC member Msgr. John Harrington.

Id.

At the same meeting, a representative of the UDC reportedly reiterated that the agency “will not do anything the City does not want us to do” with respect to housing sites, and that it would not intervene in the City’s internal disputes.

Id.

In September, the Westchester County Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution, introduced by the Yonkers supervisors, calling for representatives of the county to introduce and lobby for state legislation to curb the UDC’s power to override local zoning laws. GX 1096.103. The resolution recited that the UDC had proposed subsidized housing for sites in Yonkers where it would “completely destroy the residential character of the adjacent neighborhoods” and violate the City’s zoning laws.

Id.

Internal UDC memoranda circulated in September of 1969 indicate that Mayor O’Rourke asked the UDC to “ease off” on the issue of scattered site housing until after the November elections, and that the UDC CAC was eager to issue a statement in support of scattered site housing but had, to date, been dissuaded by UDC officials from doing so. GX 1096.101; 1096.-105; 1096.106.

On September 29, the UDC sent Mayor O’Rourke a letter which notified him that the Otis Elevator Company had rejected the UDC’s expansion proposal (thus largely ending the UDC’s involvement with Otis), but which offered to go forward with the housing component of the proposed riverfront renewal area. GX 1096.107. The letter added that:

The Citizens Advisory Committee is presently examining low and moderate income housing sites, and could be in a position to recommend a number of sites throughout the city shortly.

I understand also that the City Council has been seriously reviewing scattered site housing locations throughout Yonkers. We are available to discuss the housing solutions with you and other city officials at any time.

Id.

No further action appears to have been taken on the Candeub & Fleissig sites in the months preceding the election. In November, Councilman Del Bello defeated incumbent Mayor O’Rourke in the mayoral race. Also defeated was incumbent third ward Councilman William Schneider, who ascribed his defeat, in part, to his support of scattered site housing. Tr. 1874-77; 1909.

Del Bello promptly abandoned the Candeub & Fleissig survey. As he explained at trial:

I thought [the Candeub & Fleissig survey] was the wrong way to go, that it would build far more resistance on the part of the public to any housing whatsoever, and that if I had succumbed to the same position that Mayor O’Rourke had adopted, I could pretty well assure the people of Yonkers we would never produce any housing. I was dedicated to producing housing, and I had to find a political course that would allow us to get it constructed. And the course I chose was to not shotgun the issue, be very site specific, not to tilt at windmills, to use another expression, but to deal

*1320

with sites that were realistic, that we could get approved and to get on to the process of building housing.

Tr. 1288-89.

By April of 1970, three months after Mayor Del Bello had taken office, Webdale and City Manager Seymour Scher had negotiated a draft agreement with the UDC to build 1,400 units of housing at four locations. GX 1088.8. All four were in Southwest Yonkers, within a several block radius of the Getty Square area. GX 1225.44. Three months later, a final version of the Memorandum of Understanding (calling for 1,200 units at three of the locations) was formally presented to the YURA Board and approved that same day. C-612. The following day, it was approved by the City Council as well. C-613.

One of the sites involved was the City’s Stage II (Riverview) urban renewal area, which had originally been planned for commercial re-use, but which (over the strong objection of the City’s Planning Director Philip Pistone) had been redesignated for combined commercial and residential re-use shortly after Walter Webdale’s arrival in 1967.

See

HOUSING IV.D.l

infra.

Plans had begun soon after for the joint construction of a school and subsidized housing complex on the Riverview site,

see

SCHOOLS IV.A.2.b

infra,

with the housing intended to serve the dual function of providing a source of relocation housing for those displaced by urban renewal projects, and encouraging a return of middle-income whites into the area.

See, e.g.,

GX 288; 1088.6. The July 1970 Memorandum of Understanding with the UDC doubled the number of housing units previously scheduled for the site.

Compare

GX 1088.6

with

GX 1088.8 and C-6112.

The other three projects approved in the Memorandum — the Dorado, the Frazier Homes, and Whitney Young Manor — were intended to provide relocation housing for the (predominantly minority) population displaced by the Otis Expansion and by urban renewal in one part of a Southwest neighborhood known as the Hollow.

See, e.g.,

Webdale Dep. 172, 231-32; Lenaz Dep. 73, 232-33, 251; Tr. 10,451-52 (Yost); C-606; GX 1097.14; 1144.4; 1120.16.

Neither the site selection for the three new projects, nor the doubling of the number of units scheduled for the Riverview site, appears to have been put to any public discussion during the rapid negotiation and extraordinarily rapid approval of the Memorandum of Understanding with the UDC. Nor were the matters submitted to the Planning Board for review. Tr. 9771, 9822 (Pistone).

The Glenwood/Ridge Avenue Project and Rockledge Heights

During the same months in which the July 1970 Memorandum of Understanding was under negotiation, Walter Webdale began meeting with a group known as the Clergy of Yonkers (“COY”) and developer David Bogdanoff (both of whom were involved in the construction of other subsidized housing projects in the Southwest) regarding a proposal for the construction of a subsidized housing project for families near Glenwood and Ridge Avenues, at the northern border of Southwest Yonkers. The blocks immediately surrounding the proposed site, as well as those to the north and west, were overwhelmingly white, but there were a number of blocks with a 20-50% minority population to the Southeast. GX 1225.44; Tr. 10,191 (Bogdanoff). The project was intended to be a source of relocation housing for the Nepperhan Arterial extension, federal approval of which had been delayed due to a lack of an adequate relocation plan. GX 1207.3; 1099.8.

A developer, builder, architect, and attorney were hired, and (as he had with respect to previous projects) Bogdanoff absorbed the cost of the preliminary analysis. Tr. 10,190. At least $18,000 worth of work was completed, and COY and Bogdanoff met with Webdale and Scher in the spring of 1970 to present their plans for the project.

Id.

at 10,191-92.

Bogdanoff testified that soon thereafter, Scher reported to him that there was “strong neighborhood feeling” against the project, led by the pastor of a large Catho

*1321

lie church in the area.

Id.

at 10,192. The church group announced that it planned to use the site for senior citizens housing, and Scher asked Bogdanoff to “help him out” in the matter.

Id.

Bogdanoff testified that he suggested to COY that it “withdraw graciously,” and that he be allowed to absorb the loss “rather than to develop a principle fight which would get no place and would just tremendously increase the serious racial antagonisms that existed within the City.”

Id.

Webdale likewise had reason to believe the church group’s opposition to the family project was racially based. He testified that he had been told that members of the group had said that they “feared an influx of blacks into the neighborhood” would result if the project were built. Webdale Dep. 184-85; 579-581.

COY acceded to Bogdanoff’s request to withdraw, GX 1099.11; 1099.12, and with the assistance of MHA Secretary-Director Emmett Burke, the church group received Planning Board and City Council approval for its proposed senior citizens project within a matter of months. GX 1099.9; 1099.-11. The project was named in honor of the pastor of the church, Father Finian Sullivan, and opened in 1973. Charles Cola, who in 1971 was elected councilman of the sixth ward (in which the project was located) testified that he supported the project, and that if he had not, he “wouldn’t have been elected.” Cola Dep. 81. The occupancy data in evidence for the project describes it as 100% white. C-1650.

Fear about an influx of minorities was also expressed by area residents (and reported in the press) with respect to a proposed subsidized housing project known as Rockledge Heights. The site in question was in a predominantly white area of far Southwest Yonkers, on the bed of the old Putnam Railroad line near Wolfe Street.

In the spring of 1970, the site was proposed for an 85-unit § 236 project to be used for relocation housing. GX 1105.1; 1105.2; 1105.5. Webdale kept the ward councilman, Dominick Iannacone, informed of the progress of the plans, GX 1105.2; GX 1105.3; noted the likelihood of “objections by the community concerning the usual public facilities, schools, etc.” GX 1105.3, and asked that if the councilman had any comments, to please let him know “during these early phases.”

Id.

Councilman Iannacone initially supported the project, Tr. 990 (Iannacone), but then, as he explained at trial, he “got some flak on it.”

Id.

at 991. Some area residents complained to him about the loss of the railroad bed as a parking facility.

Id.

Others who knew him better approached him privately and said they didn’t want the housing because they didn’t want any blacks there.

Id.

at 991-92. Iannacone testified that he was, at the time, a new councilman, and wouldn’t have been elected the next time “with all those people against me,”

id.

at 992-93, and that he accordingly told the City Manager he was opposed to the project, citing his constituents’ concern about the loss of their parking facility.

Id.

at 992. Iannacone then attempted, unsuccessfully, to change the zoning for the site from multi-family to S-100, a highly restrictive single-family zoning classification. GX 1105.10.

In late summer of 1971, the City Council voted seven to six to approve the project but then immediately voted unanimously to reconsider the vote and referred the matter to the Real Estate Committee, which was chaired by Iannacone. GX 1105.14. A press account, the accuracy of which was confirmed by Iannacone at trial, reported that the site had been “buried” in Iannacone’s committee, and that he had “vowed not to let the project out of his committee until he had the council votes to kill it.” GX 1105.16;

see also

Tr. 933 (Iannacone). The article also reported that the project had “created opposition among area residents, mostly white, who are fearful that black and Puerto Rican families would move in.” GX 1105.15. Iannacone’s position was reported to be that “he was now in favor of senior citizen housing for the site but against housing for families because parking, traffic, and local services would be strained.”

Id.

No further vote was taken on the site by the City Council,

id.,

and Iannacone again tried (but again without success) to have the zoning of the site

*1322

reclassified from multi-family to single-family. GX 1105.21; 1105.23.

Iannacone acknowledged that his publicly stated reasons for opposing the project were pretextual, and that his opposition in fact was in response to his constituents’ racially influenced opposition. Tr. 991-993, 1526-29. The words “low-income,” Iannacone explained, connoted “poverty, minorities, blacks, Puerto Ricans or Hispanics.”

Id.

at 994. Senior citizen housing created less opposition, according to Iannacone, so long as the words “low income” were avoided.

Id.

Seven Pines

During that same summer, HUD notified the City that its continued receipt of urban renewal funds would be conditioned on the approval of a site for subsidized housing that was outside the City’s areas of minority concentration.

See

HOUSING IV.C.5

infra.

As a result, scattered site housing once more became (as it had been during the time of the Candeub & Fleissig survey) a highly public issue.

The site of the Seven Pines project, located in the third ward on the northern border of Southwest Yonkers, was not considered by City officials to be a “scattered site,” but in January of 1972, James Walsh, the newly elected councilman for the third ward, sought to rescind the City’s agreement with the UDC to build the project, arguing that it could lead to scattered site housing.

The Seven Pines site was among those listed in the original April 1970 draft agreement with the UDC but was dropped from the first round of UDC projects apparently out of concern on the part of City officials that too much tax abatement not be granted at once. The site was considered again by the UDC in April of 1971 along with two east side sites (the Robin Hill Day Camp site and a site at Mile Square and Tuckahoe Roads), GX 1098.15, and in June of 1971 the City Council authorized a memorandum of understanding with the UDC for the construction of 300 units of subsidized housing on the Seven Pines site. C-753.

The Seven Pines site was considered by City officials to be in a deteriorating neighborhood. A “mass exodus” of whites was believed to have occurred over the preceding decade, GX 1119.85, and City officials expressed the hope (as they had with respect to Riverview as well) that the Seven Pines project would “stabilize” the area and bring middle-income whites back to Southwest Yonkers.

Id.;

GX 1119.44; GX Tr. 901, 903-04 (Yulish); Webdale Dep. 434. The City Council's approval of the proposed project was unanimous. C-753.

A number of months later, however, in January of 1972, the project came before the City Council again to obtain a waiver of several aspects of the City’s Building Code and local zoning requirements with respect to height. Public hearings were held, and the newly elected ward councilman, James Walsh, vigorously opposed the project, seeking first (unsuccessfully) to rescind the UDC agreement and then seeking to defeat the zoning and building waivers that were required for the project to go forward.

See, e.g.,

GX 1119.8; 1119.19; 1119.62.

Walsh’s campaign against the project lasted some three months during which time he assailed the height of the building, its likely effect on area schools and traffic, the “windfall” the developer had received in selling the property to the UDC, and the loss of tax revenue created by an “unnecessary” tax abatement for a middle income building.

Id.

The arguments were characterized by Webdale as “the typical litany of issues.” Webdale Dep. 432-33.

Walsh also argued, however, that Seven Pines represented a threat that a site on the east side of the City would be developed next, GX 1119.8, 1119.20, and, in the words of a UDC memorandum summarizing the situation, that the “defeat of this project by a unified front would guarantee that no scattered site developments would occur.” GX 1119.20.

In response, City and UDC officials discussed the usefulness of meeting with Walsh to assure him that no additional sites would be chosen without consulting the ward councilman, GX 1119.21. In addi

*1323

tion they publicly made statements to that effect, GX 1119.8, and privately considered whether the UDC should, if necessary, invoke its override powers. GX 1119.10.

When Walsh’s efforts to stop the project failed, he introduced a resolution addressed to “the majority of councilmembers” who supported Seven Pines and who, “in opposition to the objections of community organizations throughout the City,” have “expressed the concept of supporting subsidized housing ... throughout the City.” GX 1119.62. The resolution called on those councilmembers to

submit to the agenda of the City Council, at the next regularly stated Council meeting, a firm Resolution giving one site, located within the confines of the Ward they represent, on which they confirm their support for subsidized housing, through either URA or UDC auspices, allowing them to build with complete impunity of zoning laws, confirming their willingness to give tax abatement on such structures and re-confirming their support of the Seven Pines concept as being the proper housing concept for the future of the City of Yonkers.

Id.

The Council voted 8 to 5 to refer the resolution to the Real Estate Committee, from which it appears never to have emerged.

Parkledge

Three months after the end of Walsh’s campaign against Seven Pines, and in response to a year of steady pressure from HUD to approve a site for subsidized housing that was outside the City’s areas of minority concentration, the City Council approved a site on Yonkers Avenue immediately west of the Saw Mill River Parkway.

Since at least mid-1970, HUD had been actively encouraging the City to adopt a “balanced housing program.”

In July of 1971, it determined that stronger action was required. During that month, Grace Malone, the Director of the Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Division of HUD’s New York Area Office, wrote a memorandum concluding that the City of Yonkers’ relocation housing programs were in violation of the civil rights laws and recommended disapproval of the City’s Year II NDP application (the major source of federal urban renewal funds for the City). P-I 180-249. The basis of Malone’s conclusion and recommendation was the City’s failure to provide relocation housing opportunities for minorities outside of areas of minority concentration.

Id.

As a result of Malone’s memo, Malone and other HUD representatives held a series of meetings with City officials in July through November of 1971. The City was advised to submit substantiation of its “alleged efforts to achieve balanced site selection in Yonkers”; a submission was made; and HUD officials concluded at an internal meeting that the' “program management staff should immediately impress upon the applicant the urgency for presenting sites for development outside Southwest Yonkers.” P-I 180-256.

On September 3, 1971, Walter Webdale and City Manager Seymour Scher met with HUD officials and identified eight sites outside of areas of minority concentration that “could be pursued.”

Id.

Four were in East Yonkers (including the Robin Hill Day Camp and Mile Square/Tuckahoe Road sites which had appeared in the April 1971 draft agreement prepared by the UDC);

*1324

two sites were in Northwest Yonkers; one was just north of the Seven Pines site; and the remaining site was in far Southwest Yonkers.

Id.

In November, Malone revised her recommendation regarding the City’s NDP application to conditional approval, with the condition being that the next housing site selected by the City be one of the eight sites identified by Scher and Webdale.

Id.

This specific condition apparently was never communicated to City officials, but it

was

made clear that HUD would require a site outside the City’s areas of minority concentration, and that the HUD officials involved preferred a site East of the Saw Mill River Parkway. Tr. 840-411, 863-65; 1128-33 (Yulish);

see also

Tr. 871. (Yulish).

Yulish also testified to meetings with eleventh ward Councilman John Hanney, second ward Councilman Peter Mancusi, and fifth ward Councilman Andrew O’Rourke. In each case, according to Yulish, the councilmen set up meetings with neighborhood associations, which invariably proved to be hostile, and following which the councilman deferred to the wishes of his constituents. Tr. 865-66, 871-78, 880-81.

*1326

Councilman Hanney, according to Yulish, just “sat back and watched us get crucified.”

Id.

at 872.

Similarly, Yulish testified, Councilman Mancusi arranged an unforgettably “chaotic” meeting with the Lincoln Park Taxpayers Association regarding possible use of the old Lincoln High School site, and then asked Yulish after the meeting “What do you want me to do? I don’t control them. They elect me.” Tr. at 881;

see also

Tr. 865.

Yulish’s encounter with Councilman O’Rourke concerned the Robin Hill Day Camp site in far Northeast Yonkers, which had been mentioned several times in recent years as a possible site for subsidized housing.

Yulish testified that like the other east side councilmembers, O’Rourke suggested that they “take it to the neighborhood,” and that he would go by what his constituency told him. Tr. 877. Yulish testified that the meetings were “hostile” and “highly emotionally charged,” and that afterwards O’Rourke simply told him that he “didn’t think it would work.” Tr. 877.

Former councilman O’Rourke disclaimed any recollection of the meetings with Yulish, and testified that he believed he would have remembered such meetings if they had occurred. Tr. 1688-90. He did, however, acknowledge that not long after the time during which the Robin Hill site repeatedly arose as a possible site for subsidized housing, he changed his position on the use of the site for conventional multifamily apartments, and subsequently supported (for the first and only time in his eight years on the Council) the zone change needed to permit such a use. Tr. 1680-84; 1690-93; 1726-27. O’Rourke also acknowledged that the developer’s proposal contained a restrictive convenant limiting the use of the property to luxury low-rise condominiums. Tr. 1690-93.

In the spring of 1972, Yulish invited the Regional Director of HUD’s New York Area Office, S. William Green, to visit Yonkers. Yulish testified that he hoped Green would “jar the Council” into taking seriously its obligation to build housing outside of areas of racial concentration. Tr. 1139-41.

Green came to Yonkers in early April and told City officials that if the City did not build subsidized housing outside of its inner city areas, it would in effect be disqualifying itself from millions of dollars in federal redevelopment funds. Tr. 1140-50 (Yulish); GX 1207.10; 1119.132. The clear substance of Green’s message, according to Yulish, was that “enough is enough in this particular area.” Tr. 1147-50. Yulish asked HUD to confirm in writing that the Otis expansion NDP grant was conditioned upon approving a scattered housing site, GX 1119.130, and HUD replied that

all

of the City’s urban renewal funds would be cut off unless a scattered site was approved. GX 1119.32.

Shortly after Green’s visit to Yonkers in early April, City officials and the UDC took action on plans for a 324-unit subsidized housing project that had been proposed by a developer several months earlier. C-778; C-780; C-781; C-783; C-784. The site of the proposed project was the so-called RAMP site on Yonkers Avenue next to the Saw Mill River Parkway. The site was on the border of the predominantly white neighborhood known as Nodine Hill, and had been proposed for public housing a number of times in the preceding decade but strongly opposed by area residents and Ward Councilman Moczydlowski.

See

HOUSING III.B and III.D.

*1327

Unlike previous years, however, City officials were able to win Moczydlowski’s support. A major reason for their success in doing so appears to have been the fact that many of Moczydlowski’s constituents were employed by Otis Elevator Company and faced the loss of their jobs if the City forfeited its federal urban renewal funds for the Otis expansion. Tr. 885-86; 1013-14 (Yulish).

Nonetheless, Moczydlowski expected, and in fact received, pressure to oppose the project from his constituents. Tr. 1018 (Yulish). Councilman Cola described the public hearings on the project as so “volatile” that you were lucky “if you remembered your name after you left there.” Cola Dep. 149. Yulish testified that the crowd “filled out into the hallways” at the hearings, with action on the site deferred at least once in part because of the Council’s reluctance to act “in the midst of this fury.” Tr. 1022.

City officials met with Moczydlowski numerous times during the course of neighborhood and City Council meetings to “bolster his support for the project.”

Id.

at 1019. Design changes were made to respond to community concerns that the access route to the project not run through a single-family area,

id.

and the councilman was not discouraged from telling his predominantly white constituents that they would be given preference in the rental of the project. Tr. 1015, 2142-45, 2148-49.

The project was unanimously approved by the City Council in June of 1972. GX 1119.100. A short time later, Councilman Moczydlowski resigned his seat on the Council and accepted an appointment as City Clerk. Councilman Cola testified that it was commonly accepted that Moczydlowski’s prospects for re-election were “not too great,” and that his appointment as City Clerk was no coincidence. Cola Dep. 97-98.

The Parkledge project was offered to HUD as the City’s “precedent toward creating greater mobility to minority families and individuals.” P-I 180-281. In fact, however, Parkledge proved to be the City's last new construction subsidized housing project for families. Although the UDC continued for a time to have access to a sizable supply of § 236 funds (despite a nationwide moratorium imposed on the program in January of 1972), and encouraged the City to “take advantage” of those available funds, no new family projects were pursued. GX 1120.59. In January of 1974, Angelo Martinelli took office as Mayor, having strongly advocated during his campaign that the City impose its own moratorium on subsidized housing, Tr. 7432-33 (Martinelli), and no additional projects were approved for a number of years. When subsidized housing development for families resumed, it was initially limited to the rehabilitation of existing structures in Southwest Yonkers. Subsequently, the City agreed, at least in theory, to support the construction of subsidized housing for families in East Yonkers, but as late as 1982, the City Council had yet to support a specific site.

See

HOUSING V

infra.

The City’s Explanations for its Confinement of Subsidized Housing to the Southwest

The City contends that its confinement of nearly 3,000 units of new subsidized housing to Southwest Yonkers during this period occurred for reasons unrelated to any racially influenced community opposition to the placement of the housing elsewhere; and it has offered a number of arguments in support of that contention.

Viewed in

*1328

the context of the record as a whole, the arguments are not persuasive. Some are not supported by the record. Others are of marginal relevance. Still others suggest only that many of the City officials involved with subsidized housing during this period were otherwise well-intentioned individuals who accepted the constraints imposed by the racially influenced opposition to subsidized housing in East and Northwest Yonkers, but within those constraints, attempted to do as much good as possible. Whether taken singly or collectively, the City’s arguments fail to alter the conclusion compelled by the record as a whole that the confinement of subsidized housing to Southwest Yonkers was, as Mayor Del Bello himself suggested, due to the fact that Southwest sites were the only ones that the City Council would approve. Tr. 1192-93.

Reliance on HUD’s Express Directions

The City first suggests that the decision to confine subsidized housing to the Southwest was largely HUD’s. In support of that suggestion, the City points to the testimony of Walter Webdale, the City’s Director of Urban Renewal from 1967 to 1971, who stated that the City’s exclusive focus on the Southwest for subsidized housing was due, at least in part, to express instructions from HUD officials to build relocation housing in or near the City’s urban renewal areas. Webdale Dep. 154, 156, 165-66.

However, there is little evidence to support Webdale’s suggestion that HUD instructed the City to concentrate exclusively on sites in the Southwest, and considerable evidence to the contrary. No other City official testified to having received, or heard of, such an instruction. No HUD official testified to having given such an instruction. Indeed, at least one HUD official expressly testified that the location of subsidized housing was for the locality to determine. Tr. 5612-13 (Lapadula). Nor has the City pointed to any written instruction from HUD either requiring or suggesting that only sites in and around urban renewal areas be considered.

To be sure, there was a very real economic advantage to be gained from choosing urban renewal land as the site for a subsidized housing project: the land could be sold to the developer at a greatly reduced price with the federal government subsidizing much of the price reduction. Tr. 5860-63 (Lapadula). That economic advantage falls short of a formal restriction of subsidized housing to urban renewal areas. Nor could it even be argued to have operated as a

de facto

restriction since most of the City’s subsidized housing projects were in fact not located within urban renewal areas.

Similarly, there is little dispute that HUD’s policies over the years reflected

*1329

changing views and emphases, and that at least in the mid-to-late 1960’s, there was a general concern about avoiding the charge made in earlier years that urban renewal too often involved “black removal” — that is, the clearance of an area of its largely minority occupants, with no provision made for relocation housing.

See, e.g.,

Tr. 10,-692-95 (Portman). In light of this general concern, it is reasonable to assume that HUD may have encouraged the City to put some of its relocation housing near the major urban renewal areas.

Cf.

Tr. 8698-704 (Kane). There is no basis for concluding, however, that HUD directed the City to locate

all

of its relocation housing in or near urban renewal areas — particularly in light of the concern expressed by HUD as early as 1966, and steadily from mid-1970 on, about the segregative effects of concentrating all subsidized housing in the City’s downtown area.

See

HOUSING III.D and IY.C.5,

supra.

In addition, the contemporaneous actions of Webdale and other City officials further suggest that HUD did not instruct the City to confine subsidized housing to urban renewal areas or their immediate vicinity. Webdale acknowledged that he himself looked at sites that were removed from urban renewal areas,

see

Webdale Dep. 58, 137, 479, and his office at least once publicly stated that after completion of Jefferson Terrace (the first privately sponsored subsidized housing project), other projects would be built on scattered sites throughout the City. GX 1079.66. The City and the UDC also hired the firm of Candeub & Fleissig to survey the City and identify possible sites for relocation housing — a considerable waste of time and money if relocation housing were in fact limited to sites in and around urban renewal areas. Moreover, even assuming the unlikely proposition that Candeub & Fleissig somehow misconstrued its assignment, the furor that erupted when the survey was released could have been easily put to rest by announcing that HUD had directed relocation housing to be placed only in and around urban renewal areas. It seems highly unlikely that City officials would have forgone such an easy means of defusing community opposition if, in fact, it had been available to them. Yet, recalling the pattern of previous years, the only apparent mention of restricting relocation housing to urban renewal areas was made by a representative of a Northeast Yonkers neighbor hood group.

See

GX 1096.65.

Finally, we note that Webdale himself appeared to retreat somewhat from his broad statements about HUD’s policy on relocation housing by acknowledging later in his testimony that HUD’s instructions may have related only to the Stage II urban renewal area. Webdale Dep. 499-500.

However, even if limited to the re-use of the Stage II urban renewal area, Webdale’s testimony is still at variance with the record as a whole. Webdale testified that while the re-use of the Riverview urban renewal area may have been a “local determination” in theory, the decision to have at least some residential re-use in fact was made by HUD. Webdale Dep. 29-33, 588-90. According to Webdale, residential reuse was mandated by HUD so that relocation housing would be available for those displaced by the Stage II and other urban renewal projects.

Id.

at 33.

However, the statutory requirement, and HUD’s general policy, was merely that relocation housing be provided

somewhere

within the locality.

See, e.g.,

Tr. 6936-37 (Schiffman). Only if it were deemed difficult or impossible to place relocation housing elsewhere would such a requirement become, in effect, a requirement that urban renewal areas be used for relocation housing. There is no question that HUD made the statutory requirement with respect to relocation housing clear to City officials. Any conclusions about the effect of that requirement in Yonkers, however, appears to have been made by City officials themselves rather than HUD.

Webdale’s testimony that HUD determined the specific re-use of the Stage II urban renewal area was not supported by any other City or HUD official. Indeed, Planning Director Philip Pistone testified directly to the contrary. Tr. 9865, 10,008 (Pistone).

*1330

In addition, the record indicates that the issue of re-use was vigorously debated by City officials. GX 1057.1; C-254; C-259; C-262. The Master Plan called for commercial re-use of the area, and prior to the reduction of the project size by HUD in 1965, commercial re-use indeed had been contemplated. Planning Director Pistone maintained, as he would continue to do well into 1970 that notwithstanding the reduction in size, commercial re-use of the area was both feasible and essential to the future economic health of the City. Tr. 9864-68, 9877-78 (Pistone); 2779-80 (Arcaro).

Pistone held to his position even after wholly commercial re-use was rejected as unfeasible by several consulting reports prepared for the City in 1966 and 1967 (another curious waste of time and money if in fact the re-use had been determined by HUD). C — 255; C-261; C-1546. Pistone contended that the reports were merely statistical studies prepared by people who knew little about Yonkers. C-262. Nonetheless, YURA decided in 1967 to recommend a combined commercial and residential re-use, with commercial development to the north, and residential development in the southern portion of the urban renewal area. C-262; GX 1079.

To be sure, there is evidence that the need for relocation housing figured in the re-use determination.

See, e.g.,

Tr. 9866 (Pistone). However, there is little if any indication in the contemporaneous evidence of the re-use debate that any City official (including Webdale himself) believed that as a matter of HUD policy, the urban renewal area could not be put to solely commercial use if an adequate amount of relocation housing were built elsewhere. Instead, the conclusion that appears to have been reached is that other locations were unavailable for such housing. In a June 1967 letter to Congressman Ottinger, most notably, Webdale explained that it was “absolutely imperative that some residential use remain in the Project Area, since the Relocation Program for problem families (i.e., apartment construction under FHA 221(d)(3)) depends on this type of housing.” GX 1087.12.

The City’s prior history of site rejections suggests why those in need of subsidized housing were considered “problem families” in 1967, and the reaction to the Candeub & Fleissig survey two years later made clear that those families would remain a problem. Thus, it is scarcely surprising that immediately following the public reaction to the Candeub & Fleissig survey, City officials doubled the number of housing units previously designated for the Stage II site.

In sum, there is little evidence to support the City’s assertion that the decision to confine subsidized housing to the Southwest was largely HUD’s. The evidence suggests, instead, a conclusion by City officials that the opposition to subsidized housing outside of Southwest Yonkers effectively transformed the requirement that adequate relocation housing be provided into a need to build as much subsidized housing as possible in the Southwest. The responsibility for that conclusion, however, clearly rests with the City and not HUD.

Absence of Private Developer Proposals in the East

The City also argues that the location of all subsidized housing projects in the Southwest during this period can, at

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