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

Heading: The Housing Remedy

Text: 67 Having found the City and CDA liable for statutory and constitutional violations, the court held a six-day hearing as to appropriate remedies. In an order published at 635 F.Supp. 1577 (1986) (Housing Order) and an unpublished Modification to Housing Remedy Order (Modification Order), dated July 8, 1986, the court permanently enjoined the City from, inter alia, intentionally promoting racial residential segregation in Yonkers and ordered that certain affirmative steps be taken toward a wider distribution of public housing. 68 The court noted that the City had already committed itself to providing sites for 200 units of public housing in order to receive its 1983 Community Development Block Grant (Development Grant) funds but had never fulfilled that commitment; the City also had entered into a Consent Decree with HUD that provided that HUD would reduce Development Grant funding if the City did not submit for preapproval sites for at least 140 of the 200 public housing units. The court ordered the City to submit an acceptable Housing Assistance Plan to HUD and execute a grant agreement with HUD, in order to receive the Development Grant funds for 200 units of subsidized housing, 635 F.Supp. at 1580; Modification Order at 2-4, and to submit to HUD for preapproval at least two sites for 140 [of the agreed 200] units of family public housing, 635 F.Supp. at 1580. 69 The Housing Order provided that if the City did not submit two such sites within 30 days of the court's order, the City would be deemed to have submitted the sites of three closed schools in East Yonkers, i.e., School 4, School 15, and the Walt Whitman School, or such other sites as might be proposed by plaintiffs and approved by the court. Schools 4 and 15, closed in 1976, had been returned to the City in 1982; Walt Whitman had been closed in 1983, and the court ordered the Board of Education to return that school to the City as well. The court also ordered the City to submit sites selected from a specific list for the remaining 60 public housing units. Id. at 1581. 70 In addition, the court ordered the City to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund for the encouragement of private development of low-and moderate-income housing, to be funded initially with at least 25% of the Development Grant funds allocated to the City by HUD. Id. at 1581-82; Modification Order at 1-2. It also ordered the City to establish a Fair Housing Office with prescribed responsibilities, to seek HUD approval for transfer of the administration of the Section 8 Certificate program to MHA, and to develop a plan for more subsidized family housing units in areas outside of Southwest Yonkers. 635 F.Supp. at 1577-82.