Opinion ID: 500653
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Segregative Intent

Text: 234 Intent to discriminate may be established in a number of ways. Often it may be inferred from the totality of the relevant facts, including the fact, if it is true, that the law bears more heavily on one race than another. Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. at 242, 96 S.Ct. at 2048. Such impact may be an important starting point. Other probative sources may include the historical background of the decision ..., particularly if it reveals a series of official actions taken for invidious purposes; [t]he specific sequence of events leading up to the challenged decision, such as zoning changes for a given site enacted upon the decisionmaker's learning of plans for the construction there of integrated housing; contemporary statements by members of the decisionmaking body, minutes of its meetings, or reports; [d]epartures from the normal procedural sequence; and [s]ubstantive departures ..., particularly if the factors usually considered important by the decisionmaker strongly favor a decision contrary to the one reached. Arlington Heights I, 429 U.S. at 267-68, 97 S.Ct. at 564-65. In the present case, a wealth of evidence in each of these categories supports the district court's finding that the City intended its housing decisions to result in the confinement of minorities to existing minority areas. 235 The impact of the City's decisions has been discussed in the preceding section. The historical background of these decisions included the City's 1930's decision to build a housing project especially for blacks, its rejection of a number of sites on the ground that the level of minority concentration there was not sufficiently high, and its eventual selection in 1940 of a site in one of the most heavily minority areas of Southwest Yonkers. 624 F.Supp. at 1312. 236 Many sequential clusters support the proposition that the City's decisions in the ensuing decades were similarly purposely segregative. The most commonly recurring sequence consisted of a site proposal for a white area, followed by vehement community opposition (e.g., letters on behalf of 2,000 residents; 1,000 attending public meetings), followed by City Council disapproval of the site. There was virtually never a site proposal for low-income family housing in a white area that was not met with opposition; there was virtually never white-community opposition that was not followed by withdrawal or rejection of the site. 237 There was ample evidence that much of the white-area residents' opposition to low-income housing was race-related. Both the Council and the community equated low-income family housing with minorities and senior citizen housing with whites. Thus, a group of white Catholics urged that the housing project proposed for their area be changed from family to senior citizen, stating that they feared an influx of blacks. Virtually all councilmen from East Yonkers stated that they were concerned about community opposition to low-income housing in their areas; many acknowledged explicitly that that opposition was race related. Iannacone testified that his own facially race-neutral public opposition to a proposed low-income housing project had been pretextual, masking his response to his constituents' racial concerns; some of those constituents had stated, pretextually, that they feared of loss of a parking lot, but others who knew him better told him they didn't want the housing because they didn't want any blacks there. Speakers at meetings, officials at trial, and contemporary news articles reflected the view that many of Yonkers's white residents were opposed to having to absorb the overflow from Puerto Rico or Harlem, and were not ready to accept racial integration. Officials describing public meetings said racial motivations were definitely a consideration and were thick in the air. Councilmen discussing Section 8 Certificates and forbidding MHA to obtain such certificates for family housing exhibited their concern[ ] about the possibility that members of the minority community would, in fact, seek and probably find units on the east side of the city. 238 The inference that the City intended to preserve racially segregated neighborhoods was also supported by evidence of its swift zoning obstructions of specific prospects for desegregative construction. For example, as to three sites submitted by CDA and tentatively approved by HUD in 1980, the Council rezoned one site for use as a shopping center; it refused to rezone another to a category consistent with a housing project; and as soon as the third was mentioned as a possibility for low-income housing, the Council rezoned it to remove it from the category appropriate for a housing project, in order to give the community some peace of mind. The Council indicated that it would rezone the site to the original category to permit luxury housing but not minority housing, stating, we will change that zone when the concept fits the people, not before. 239 The record also reflects numerous instances in which the City deviated from its normal procedural sequences or ignored the usual substantive standards in order to place low-income housing in Southwest Yonkers or to prevent its construction in East Yonkers. For example, in the 1950's the City constructed 415 units of low-income housing on a minority-area site though the Planning Board recommended a limit of 250 units; the City rejected every site recommendation from the Planning Board, even those the planning experts rated as superlatively suitable, if the site was in a virtually all-white neighborhood. In the 1970's, when Planning Board opposition to further low-income housing construction in Southwest Yonkers was known, the City simply began construction there without consulting that body. In the 1980's, when the Council wished to have the School 4 site used for luxury housing rather than for low-income housing, it again bypassed the Planning Board and, in an unprecedented move, appointed a five-person advisory committee, four members of which had no planning or zoning experience; their major qualification appears to have been that they were white residents of the School 4 area. 240 Finally, the City's intent to preserve the existing racial imbalance between Southwest and other areas of Yonkers was made clear by the words and actions of Mayor Martinelli. In 1971, HUD had warned the City that in order to retain federal funding, the City would have to build minority housing in nonminority neighborhoods. Thereafter, Martinelli won election on a campaign platform that included the promise of no more subsidized family housing in Yonkers. He was true to his word, and no more such housing was built. He further sought to ensure the preservation of the predominantly white neighborhoods by appointing school board members who would not approve busing, stating that a Board of Education fully committed to neighborhood schools ... is of critical importance to neighborhood stability.... 241 Neither this summary nor our more detailed summary in Part A.I.A. recounts all of the evidence that supports the district court's finding that the City's housing decisions were intentionally segregative. Given even that fraction of the proof recited here as to the impact of the City's decisions, the sequences of events, the procedural deviations, the convenient disregard of substantive standards, and the explicit and veiled statements of racial concerns, we regard as frivolous the City's contention that the evidence is insufficient to support the district court's finding that the City made its subsidized housing decisions with a segregative purpose. 242