Judge rules against HUD in civil rights case

Baltimore Sun ^ | January 6, 2005 | Eric Siegel

[Graybeard58]

Ruling in a 10-year-old civil rights case, a federal judge in Baltimore decided today that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development did not meet its obligations under fair housing laws by the agency's "failure adequately to consider a regional approach to desegregation of public housing."

In a victory for public housing residents and the American Civil Liberties Union delivered before a packed courtroom, U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis said it "was, and continues to be unreasonable for the agency not to consider housing programs that include the placement of more than an insubstantial portion" of public housing residents in white, middle-class areas outside the city.

Garbis said the public housing residents did not prove bias against the city. But he said the residents have proven a "statutory claim, and possibly a Constitutional claim as well" against HUD for failing to provide "housing free from discrimination."

"Baltimore city should not be viewed as an island reservation for

[L98Fiero]

A home or a piece of property is an investment, not just a place to live. I do not wish to sell my house for less than I paid for it. Apartment complexes, subsidized housing and "manufactured housing" have proven time and time again to lower property values. I'm not interested on losing thousands of dollars in equity on my property just so some rentor can feel better about their station in life.

People see their heighborhoods going to crap and they sell and move somewhere else or start renting the property before the value of their property tanks, leaving a once nice neighborhood to the rentors and HUDs who have no respect for, or investment in, the property. Subsidized housing is poison to real esate values.

[Unicorn]

BTTT