Opinion ID: 2365726
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 19

Heading: Enjoin Interference with Construction of Low and Moderate Income Housing

Text: Frequently, a corporate litigant which wishes to construct a residential development will initiate a suit challenging a municipal zoning ordinance even before it has designed the project or acquired the land. Under such a case, a trial court would be unable to grant a successful litigant the type of specific relief which I have described. Therefore, even after an exclusionary ordinance has been set aside, an unyielding municipality may be able to frustrate the developer's plans and impede construction of housing for low and moderate income people. The multiplicity of local controls ( e.g., subdivision, building and health codes) and the presence of numerous reviewing agencies ( e.g., planning and zoning boards, site plan and environmental review commissions and building, health, water and sewer authorities) increase the potential for administrative delay. Unwarranted delays, in turn, can cause problems for the developers by increasing their costs to the point that their projects become financially unfeasible. To avoid these problems in cases where specific relief is not yet practical, courts could enjoin unwarranted municipal interference with efforts by the corporate plaintiff to construct needed housing. For instance, in Crow v. Brown, supra , a federal housing discrimination case, the U.S. District Court included in its remedial decree an order enjoining all county officials from interfering in any way with the construction and completion of several apartment buildings earmarked for low and moderate income residents. Id. 332 F. Supp. at 395. Where necessary or appropriate, a court may go further and issue an order enjoining government officials from failing to take certain affirmative actions. An excellent example of this remedial device appears in Kennedy Park Homes Ass'n v. Lackawanna, supra , another housing discrimination case. There, the court ordered, inter alia : 2. That ... defendants shall immediately take whatever action is necessary to provide adequate sewage service to the K.P.H.A. [the corporate litigant] subdivision.