Bulldozing Homes and Civil Rights

MOUNT HOLLY, New Jersey – It felt like an earthquake. Nancy Lopez was making breakfast when machines started tearing into the semi-attached house next door, ripping it to pieces and rattling the tiles off her bathroom wall.

“I thought that my house wasn’t gonna stay up,” Lopez said. “That was the worst day of my life.”

Lopez, who moved here in 1987, is one of the few remaining residents of Mount Holly Gardens, a neighborhood that no longer really exists but could fundamentally reshape civil rights law.

In 2003, leaders of this small township decided that crime in the Gardens had made the neighborhood–home to many black and Latino families–irredeemable. They devised a plan to buy the aging homes, raze them and replace them with higher-end housing the residents couldn’t afford.

Neighbors resisted, banded together as Mount Holly Gardens Citizens in Action and sued.

In court, they challenged the township’s designation of the neighborhood as blighted and accused Mount Holly of discriminating against residents on the basis of race.

Even if the discrimination wasn’t intentional, they said, the redevelopment project would have a disparate impact on the township’s only neighborhood where blacks and Latinos are the majority, destroying their hard earned homes.

The township denies that race had anything to do with the decision, saying that it was a last ditch effort to rid Mount Holly of crime and improve its economy. More than that, they say, the redevelopment was in the best interest of Gardens residents themselves, even if they didn’t realize it.

“We had to do something to save the people from that neighborhood,” said a former township official who would only talk on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing litigation. “That’s the reason we did it. It would have been discrimination not to do anything.”

Click on the picture above for the FULL STORY

Undercover Investigation Reveals Discrimination against Latinos by Large Apartment Owner in South Central United States

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The National Fair Housing Alliance filed a housing discrimination complaint with the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Arkansas Fair Housing Commission against Bailey Properties for refusing to rent to Latinos and discriminating in the conditions or terms of rental based on national origin and/or race.

Bailey Properties, now operates as part of BSR Trust, LCC, which owns and operates close to 19,000 apartments throughout the southeastern United States. “Bailey Properties has absolutely no excuse for discriminating against Latinos in this day and age,” said Shanna L. Smith, President and CEO of NFHA. “They have a duty to ensure their employees understand and follow the requirements of the law. Discrimination based on national origin or race will not be tolerated.”

Click on the NFHA icon above for FULL PRESS RELEASE.

Heritage Walk Commemorates Civil Rights Activists

William Larkins, FAMU Student Body President (wearing glasses in black shirt on far right), leads protesters downtown

Tallahassee FL- Two women’s refusals to do as they were told led to their arrests, a 10-month community-wide boycott and life-long repercussions. Those women were Wilhelmina Jakes and Carrie Patterson – two students who refused to go to the back of a bus nearly 60 years ago leading to the second major bus boycott in the United States. Their life-altering decision to reject the status quo is memorialized in an innovative and artistic sidewalk that allows citizens to take a walk back in time to a period that significantly altered not only Tallahassee but the entire country. The sidewalk specifically commemorates the 1956 bus boycott and the lunch counter sit-ins of the 1960s in Tallahassee and honors more than 50 civil rights activists, also known as foot soldiers.

For exclusive video narrated  by FHC President Vince Larkins, nephew of William Larkins and Wilhelmina Jakes, visit us on Facebook or click on the picture above to view this FULL STORY.

Westchester Loses $7.4 M in HUD Grants

WESTCHESTER COUNTY, N.Y. ━ Westchester has lost its prolonged tug-of-war with the federal government over $7.4 million in federal grants that fund programs for the needy.

The decision was made by a panel of judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals and will allow the Department of Housing and Urban Development to reallocate those funds to a community outside of Westchester, which it must do before Sept. 30, the end of the federal fiscal year. If the money is not reallocated by then, it would be sent back to the U.S. Treasury. Cilck on the icon above for FULL STORY.