Posted on 08/29/2009 1:19:57 PM PDT by WayneLusvardi
Preface: Did alleged abductor of Jaycee Dugard, Philip Garrido, receive Section 8 rental assistance payments? Did actions of the Race Equity Project block the City of Antioch and Contra Costa County from inspecting the Garrido home? Read below.
Excerpted from Race Equity Project homepage
http://lsnc.net/equity/2008/09/27/targeted-enforcement-of-section-8-participants-in-antioch/
Targeted Enforcement of Section 8 Participants in Antioch
September 27, 2008 (posted by ElektroMoose)
Author: The Race Equity Project, Legal Services of Northern California
Several trends collided in the town of Antioch to cause a “perfect storm” threatening the civil rights of African-American participants in the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program. Antioch, a city of about 100,000 people located in eastern Contra Costa County, and near the central valley of California, experienced rapid population growth and explosive home construction during the past several years. As the residential real estate market severely weakened and then collapsed, Section 8 voucher holders from more expensive areas in the San Francisco bay area gravitated to Antioch because of its attractive and reasonably priced rental market. Similar actions by private renters caused striking demographic changes, for example, in just the past five years the percentage of African-American residents of Antioch more than doubled.
By February 2006, officials in Antioch were publicly attributing perceived problems in the city to an influx of Section 8 participants. City Councilmember Jim Davis complained that Section 8 participants “seem to be a magnet for problems throughout the city of Antioch. . . . I want to see what recourse, as a city, we have to limit the numbers [of Section 8 tenants].” Mayor Donald Freitas was quoted as saying, “If the city of Antioch has ten percent of the county population, but has (16 percent) of Section 8 housing, it is a reason for concern.” Other city officials reported that “neighbors’ complaints have led them to believe that renters and Section 8 recipients [were] creating problems [in Antioch].”
In April 2006, Councilmember Davis called for Antioch to create its own agency to “handle complaints about Section 8 housing.” Soon after, city officials, “police and code-enforcement personnel decided to look more closely at the number of calls for service involving . . . Section 8 housing.” According to a report Antioch issued in November 2006, “City leaders . . . believe Antioch is home to a disproportionate number of subsidized tenants . . . [T]heir behavior patterns are disruptive; and they bring crime, drugs and disorder to the neighborhood.”
In May 2006, purportedly frustrated with nuisance allegedly caused by renters, particularly those receiving Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher benefits, certain residents of Antioch formed a group calling itself “United Citizens for Better Neighborhoods” (“UCBN”). Its founder, Gary Gilbert, stated he was particularly incensed by low-income tenants he perceived had brought a “Ghetto attitude” to Antioch. UCBN began demanding that Antioch somehow address the alleged problem.
In about July of 2006, and reacting to complaints of increased nuisance and criminal activity allegedly caused by the influx of Section 8 Voucher Participants to Antioch, the city and Antioch Police Department created a unit called the “Community Action Team” (“CAT”) within the police force. Although ostensibly aimed at addressing “quality of life” issues throughout Antioch, from the outset CAT disproportionately focused, and continues to focus, on Section 8 voucher participants, and particularly on those residing in the more affluent neighborhoods of Antioch.
On receiving a complaint reporting a disturbance or nuisance in a residential neighborhood, including domestic violence related incidents, CAT would make special efforts to determine if the resident of the premises involved in the incident was a participant in the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program. If so, the complaint of disturbance or nuisance would be forwarded to the housing authority, often with the suggestion that the participant be terminated from the Voucher Program for violating his or her tenant obligations.
Several families testified publicly about their complaints against CAT at an Antioch City Council meeting in September 2007. After receiving numerous civil rights complaints from Section 8 participants, Bay Area Legal Aid and Public Advocates of San Francisco joined together to research these allegations. Attorneys from the two groups obtained documents to analyze statistics, and released a report in December 2007. Data in this report showed that in 2007 the Housing Authority of the County of Contra Costa declined to seek termination of more than 60 percent of the referrals received from CAT. Furthermore, the rate of “unfounded referrals” by CAT to the housing authority in 2006 and 2007 was significantly higher for Voucher Program participants identified as African-American. According to housing authority data, 71.8 percent of unfounded referrals by CAT involved African-American participants, while only 17.9 percent of unfounded referrals involved White participants.
Reaction from the Antioch City Council to the report by Public Advocates and BayLegal came at a public meeting in December 2007, and was very hostile. Take a look at the 09/25/2007 and 12/18/2007 meeting videos. A subsequent attempt by the two groups to enter into a dialogue with the city was rebuffed, and in May 2008 Bay Area Legal Aid filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of several clients. This case was expanded into a class action by an amended complaint filed in July 2008 by the Impact Fund, ACLU, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, and Public Advocates. On August 9, 2008 the New York Times profiled the case in a front page story. Antioch recently filed its answer to the complaint, and litigation is continuing.
Interested in more information? Contact David Levin, Staff Attorney, Contra Costa County Regional Office, Bay Area Legal Aid.
African-American? I believe in Antioch the generally accepted term is "Pittsburg people"...
bttt
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