Court Opinion

ID: 9457335
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:18:58.086412+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:18.174616
License: Public Domain

OAKES, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
This suit seeking injunctive and declaratory relief against allegedly discriminatory housing and zoning policies of a Long Island community has been pending since February 7, 1969. Plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary relief enjoining code enforcement proceedings against certain homes in what they refer to as a “ghetto area” of the town, not filed until November 20,1970, was denied by the court below from the bench on April 23, 1970, without findings, conclusions or opinion. The colloquy between court and counsel, and the court’s order of May 13, 1971, however, indicate that the court thought injunctive relief improper when sought on behalf of persons displaced by code enforcement rather than urban renewal, since the Town’s only obligation was to relocate those people displaced by urban renewal.1 *325It is interesting to note that, until the demand of this court at oral argument was complied with by letter dated July 20, the addresses of the four “homes” against which code enforcement has been threatened were not revealed to the plaintiffs, the court below or this court, “to minimize,” we are now told, “the possibility of advance warning to the slumlord owners thereby enabling them to avoid service of process.” 2
The plaintiffs’ main case — and their application for preliminary injunctive relief rests on it — -purports to be a class action brought on behalf of “all the black and Puerto Rican residents of the Town who are being and have been deprived of their rights to equal housing opportunities by the actions of defendants.” 3 The complaint alleges that the Town has deprived plaintiffs and other black and Puerto Rican citizens as a class of Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendment rights by failing to provide a sufficient number of low income housing units through the Town Housing Authority or through zoning laws, and by failing to permit construction of any other multiple dwellings or inexpensive single dwellings. The complaint also alleges that, through urban renewal and inadequate relocation housing, the Town has deprived the individual named plaintiffs of their Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
The trial court very properly refused to dismiss the original action. Southern Alameda Spanish Speaking Organization (SASSO) v. City of Union City, 424 F.2d 291 (9th Cir. 1970); Norwalk CORE v. Norwalk Redevelopment Agency, 395 F.2d 920, 931 (2d Cir. 1968). See also Kennedy Park Homes Ass’n v. City of Lackawanna, 436 F.2d 108 (2d Cir. 1970), cert. denied, 401 U.S. 1010, 91 S.Ct. 1256, 28 L.Ed.2d 546 (1971). The sole question here is whether denial of preliminary relief to forty black and Puerto Rican individuals, comprising seventeen families, was proper. That question involves two subsidiary inquiries. The first is whether the displaced families who live outside of the urban renewal area have any standing, either as members of plaintiffs’ class or as persons suffering from discriminatory housing practices. The second is whether any pendent relief ought to be given when any right thereto is obviously intertwined with resolution of the merits, or, in other words, is dependent upon proof of the underlying claim that by failure to provide adequate low income housing the defendant Town, aided by the individual and federal *326agency defendants, is discriminating against blacks and Puerto Ricans and in effect forcing them out of the Town.
In answering those questions on an expedited appeal we are handicapped no end by the absence of findings below. If in fact the trial court found that the forty persons for whom preliminary relief was sought were not within the plaintiffs’ class, I think the trial court was in error. The allegations of the complaint were broad enough to encompass these persons. While, as a recent recruit from the district court, I sympathize with the trial judge’s problems with Rule 23, Fed.R.Civ.P., this case seems to turn on — or at least involves — the same issue for both urban renewal displacees and other black and Puerto Rican residents of the town of Huntington: has the Town pursued, inadvertently or otherwise, and is it pursuing, a housing policy based on racial discrimination ? Thus it would seem that the court below should properly have found, within Rule 23(b) (3) “that the questions of law or fact common to the members of the class predominate over any questions affecting only individual members, and that a class action is superior to other available methods for the fair and efficient adjudication of the controversy,” Cases of racial discrimination are particularly cited by the Advisory Committee on Rules as appropriate for class actions within Rule 23(b) (2) where “the party opposing the class has acted or refused to act on grounds generally applicable to the class. * * * ” [Advisory Committee’s Notes following Rule 23, Fed.R.Civ.P., 28 U.S. C.A. (1971).] At the very least it would seem to me we should remand for specific findings on this question.
I come then to the merits of the request for preliminary relief, assuming as the majority assumes, that plaintiffs had standing to seek it on behalf of the forty people living in substandard, not to say deplorable, housing in the town of Huntington. Suffice it to say that in my view, plaintiffs made a sufficient preliminary showing of the Town’s longstanding policy of passivity resulting in housing discrimination against minority groups, to have justified a grant of some form of preliminary relief to maintain the status quo:
6. Reduction in the Supply of Low-Cost Housing: In the 10 year period 1960 to date there has been a net gain of over 16,000 dwelling units in the Town of Huntington. Of these only 40 have been low-cost rental units (public housing) while the bal- [sic] consisted of 189 two-family units and 16,424 single family homes. Average price of the single family homes exceeds $30,-000.
7. During the same period approximately 200, predominantly low-cost dwelling units, or over 14 times the number replaced, were demolished by public action in the Town of Huntington. The largest single factor in these demolitions was the Huntington Station Urban Renewal Project which displaced over 240 predominantly Black and Puerto Rican households. The balance of the demolitions was accounted for by code enforcement, highway construction, fires, etc., and also resulted in the substantial displacement of low-income minority-group households.
******
12. Clearest evidence of this is glaringly apparent in the fact that the incidence of widespread overcrowding in illegal apartments is limited predominantly to low-income minority group neighborhoods such as Green-lawn. The Town, in its most recent Workable Program submittal, acknowledges that, “Vacancy rates for all levels of housing in the community (the Township of Huntington) are miniscule.” The Housing Authority estimates an immediate need for 700 additional low-cost family units.
13. The Town Continues to Exacerbate the Problem: Instead of taking urgent steps to meet the growing need for low-cost minority-group housing in the Town, the Town has refused to respond and has, in fact, continued to *327create the pressures bringing about a reduction in the supply. In spite of recommendations in 1964, by the Town’s planning consultants, Harland Bartholomew, and Associates, the Town deleted from its Comprehensive Plan, the modest proposal to permit the construction of 3,000 additional apartments by 1980; and continued in effect its moratorium on apartments which was instituted in 1960. The Town has refused to approve recommendations by its Housing Authority in 1967 for the construction of 60 units of “Turnkey” public housing; and has periodically conducted code enforcement programs in minority-group neighborhoods to eliminate illegal apartments.
Affidavit of Yale Rabin, AIP, Nov. 24, 1970, Appellants’ Appendix 102-05a (footnotes omitted).
On argument of the appeal the Town conceded that it had done nothing to find temporary replacement housing for the forty persons who, with code enforcement, will be evicted from the four “homes” against which enforcement is contemplated. Thus, taking the plaintiffs’ allegations and supporting affidavits as true for our purposes, the Town has at least been a jewel of consistency.
The'preliminary relief the court below might afford is not confined to prohibiting enforcement of the Town building code. “Once a right and a violation have been shown, the scope of a district court’s equitable powers to remedy past wrongs is broad, for breadth and flexibility are inherent in equitable remedies.” Swann v. Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554 (April 20, 1971). The district court might require the Town, pendente lite, to find suitable temporary housing for the people who would be displaced by the code enforcement. “The qualities of mercy and practicality have made equity the instrument for nice adjustment and reconciliation between the public interest and private needs as well as between competing private claims ” Hecht Co. v. Bowles, 321 U.S. 321, 329-330, 64. S.Ct. 587, 592, 88 L.Ed. 754 (1944). The fact that it is a town which is claimed to be discriminating is of no moment.4
We have been reminded by the Supreme Court recently that however “administratively awkward, inconvenient and even bizarre” the remedy for “deliberately constructed and maintained” racial discrimination may be, “all awkwardness and inconvenience cannot be avoided in the interim period when remedial adjustments are being made * * Swann v. Board of Education, supra, 91 S.Ct. at 1282. That conclusion, I believe, holds as true for housing as for schools and for preliminary relief as for temporary or permanent relief. See Kennedy Park Homes, supra; Nor-walk CORE, supra,
James v. Valtierra, 402 U.S. 137, 91 S.Ct. 1331, 28 L.Ed.2d 678 (U.S. April 26, 1971), may, I suppose, be read as the majority apparently reads it, to permit discrimination against the poor, despite past holdings in McDonald v. Board of Education, 394 U.S. 802, 89 S.Ct. 1404, 22 L.Ed.2d 739 (1969); Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 86 S.Ct. 1079, 16 L.Ed.2d 169 (1966); Douglas v. California, 372 U.S. 353, 83 S.Ct. 814, 9 L.Ed.2d 811 (1963), and other cases.5 But no one has suggested *328that James erodes the vitality of Supreme Court decisions against racial discrimination. Indeed, James reaffirms, while distinguishing away, Hunter v. Erickson, 393 U.S. 385, 89 S.Ct. 557, 21 L.Ed.2d 616 (1969) (referendum on housing ordinances creating classification based upon race invalid). Here, it seems to me, the plaintiffs allege, and have for purposes of preliminary relief sufficiently shown, racial discrimination.
I agree wholeheartedly with the majority opinion that “what this case, already pending for two and a half years, badly needs is the resolution of factual issues that only a trial judge can afford.” 6 But surely until that trial is had the status quo of the parties should be maintained at least to the extent that the forty persons who seek preliminary relief should not be evicted from the town of Huntington. While much is made of the necessity and desirability of prompt code enforcement against the four dwellings here in question, the truth is that the Town has been dragging its heels as much as anyone. The trial court required the plaintiffs to submit a list of fifty-eight names of urban renewal displacees to the Town, with the understanding that the Town was to reveal within two days whether any of the fifty-eight were tenants of the four dwellings against which enforcement was sought. The plaintiffs complied with the court’s order on November 30, or December 1, 1970, and in April 1971 after a letter from the trial court, the Town produced an affidavit dated December 11, 1970, stating that there was no identity between any persons on the plaintiffs’ list and those in the four dwellings. In fairness to the Town, however, it should be pointed out that a change in personnel apparently caused some confusion in the town attorney’s office. (Tr. of April 23, 1971, hearing.)
Surely the court below can exercise that nice balance of “mercy and practicality” to which Hecht Co. v. Bowles, supra, refers, to bring about temporary adjustment here and to avoid the irreparable harm that eviction may cause these forty members of the plaintiffs’ class. I would reverse and remand, to give the trial court the opportunity to do so.

. ORDERED, that plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction be, and the same hereby is, denied, with leave granted to plaintiffs’ [sic] to immediately renew said *325motion upon telephone notice to the attorneys for the defendants as to any person evicted or threatened with eviction as a result of the legal proceedings being taken by defendant Town of Huntington to enforce the provisions of the Code of the Town of Huntington applicable to zoning, building and housing who is a person displaced from the Town of Huntington urban renewal area in Huntington Station who has been relocated in the first instance in the premises from which he is being evicted or threatened with eviction.
Order of Judge Travia dated May 13, 1971.

. Letter of Town of Huntington to U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, July 20, 1971. In the course of one of several colloquies in the proceedings below, the deputy town attorney, referring to the plaintiffs’ attorney and the Town’s refusal to “prejudice” its position by naming the four houses against which it intended to seek enforcement, said : “If tbe court will pardon my saying so, Mr. Shapiro doesn’t know who his clients are, and I really wouldn’t like to tell him.” One might wonder why the court below permitted games to be played when important rights were involved. Plaintiffs have lost this appeal, but presumably the persons in the four houses could now bring suit on their own behalf; with the trial court in effect holding plaintiffs here have no standing to seek preliminary relief, and the appellate court reaching the merits without a remand, the binding effect of the judgment here on the forty people threatened with eviction is left to speculation.

. Other relief sought in the complaint, only incidentally material here, includes relief against housing search warrants and threatened criminal proceedings and af-fimative relief to require construction of adequate relocation housing.

. In a period of rapid change like ours, the pace of social adjustments must be quickened. Poignant experience lias made us realize tlie public implications of interests heretofore treated as private. Such in-ests must be stripped of many of their past immunities and subjected to appropriate responsibility. Courts will thus be called upon to make and to sustain extensive readjustments.
Felix Frankfurter, Social Issues Before the Supreme Court (Yale Review, Spring 1933), reprinted in Kurland, Felix Frankfurter on the Supreme Court 290 (1970).

. I would prefer to read James more narrowly as approving a state-wide referendum requirement for investment in low rent public housing in a state where other referenda are used on a variety of subjects, but I have to confess that the majority opinion in James does not seem to answer the point made in the dissent, so *328that one might question whether the equal protection clause any longer applies to prevent discrimination against the poor as such.

. It is likewise true that the question of policy-discrimination on which preliminary relief turns is the principal question on the merits.