Court Re-Opens Huntington Exclusionary Zoning Case: Housing Discrimination Lawsuit on Long Island Moves Forward

25 January 2006

A challenge to the Town of Huntington zoning decisions which block minority families from living in the Town is expected to proceed under a recent court decision, fair housing advocates announced this week. The decision by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York found that the complaint, brought by the Fair Housing in Huntington Committee, the Huntington Branch NAACP, and others, could show discrimination in how Huntington blocked affordable housing development at a site on Ruland Road. Huntington's decision blocking housing likely to attract minority families to overwhelmingly white areas of Huntington could discriminate in violation of the federal Fair Housing Act and the Constitution and perpetuate longstanding segregation in the Town, the court held. This finding reverses an earlier decision dismissing the lawsuit.

This decision represents the latest turn in a long-running litigation between the Town and fair housing advocates, represented by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Boston Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the National NAACP and Skadden Arps. In 1988, a landmark federal court decision, Huntington Branch NAACP v. Town of Huntington, found that the Town had engaged in a systemic pattern of housing discrimination by preventing the development of affordable family housing outside concentrated minority areas in Huntington Station.

The current case stems from ongoing efforts to fulfill the promise of that decision, to promote housing opportunities for all in Huntington's mostly white neighborhoods and to encourage integrated housing and schools. The case, originally filed in 2002, challenges decisions by Huntington which eliminated affordable family housing opportunities likely to promote integration at both The Greens, a large site now developed as senior housing, and Ruland Road, currently undeveloped. In both instances, and others, the Town acted to block or eliminate affordable multi-bedroom family housing opportunities in the Town's white areas, the complaint alleges. The fair housing advocates are seeking an order requiring the Town to approve affordable family housing. A study by the Fair Housing in Huntington Committee ("FHHC") shows that despite the large and growing need for family housing in Huntington, the Town has done more to promote senior housing, which is much more likely to house whites.

"For years, we've tried to get Huntington to support developers trying to provide affordable family housing to start chipping away at the history of segregation here," said Bud Peyton, president of FHHC.

"People of all races should be able to live in Huntington," said Ulysses Spicer, vice president of the Huntington Branch NAACP. "We're glad the court agrees that Huntington should not be allowed to block developers who want to give families with children that chance."

The decision also comes against the backdrop of a study by ERASE Racism, released earlier in 2005, showing that Long Island remains among the most segregated suburban counties in the country, even decades after the elimination of formal de jure segregation. The Lawyers' Committee and Long Island ACORN are also involved in another exclusionary zoning case brought against the Village of Garden City and Nassau County. That case involves claims that, after initially permitting affordable housing opportunities likely to attract minorities to virtually all-white Garden City, the Village and the County blocked the plan. It also involves claims that Nassau County has systematically used federal funds to promote the development of affordable family housing only in segregated, mostly black and Hispanic areas of the County.

The Town of Huntington responded to the court's recent order by asking the court for permission to immediately appeal the decision to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, or to dismiss the case on alternative grounds. A decision on that motion is still pending.

"The court's decision reinforces the established principle that governments cannot close their communities to minorities or families with children," said Barbara Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights. "Particularly in a community that has resisted integration for so long, it's so important to fight to ensure that people of all races can live side by side and send their children to the same public schools."

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