A U.S. Court of Appeals ordered a Federal District Judge to hold trial to determine whether the New York City Housing Authority may rent many of the flats in a federally assisted low income project on the Lower East Side to elderly Jews for whom the flats had been ear-marked. The order last week in effect rejected the validity of a ruling by District Court Judge Morris Lasker last Feb. 7 that the plan excluded Puerto Rican residents of the area and used religious criteria in the assignment of apartments.
The Appeals Court decision by a three-judge panel, rendered by Judge Walter R. Mansfield, rejected Judge Lasker’s ruling that Hispanic and Black minorities had absolute preference for the flats because they lived in the neighborhood.
The panel found that, on the contrary, if rental of the flats to non-whites resulted in ghettoizing the project, it would constitute a violation of the Fair Housing Act which requires the integration of all federally funded housing. The trial before Judge Lasker will be to determine whether the neighborhood with-its present ethnic composition is or is not integrated.
The buildings in question are two 23-story high rises in the Seward Park Extension Urban Renewal area. One is not yet completed and the other has remained vacant for more than a year because of the litigation surrounding its occupancy. The City Housing Authority leased 171 of the 369 apartments to Orthodox Jews, mostly elderly, now living in other housing projects. The purpose was to locate them close to a synagogue. The plan called for relocating Puerto Rican families in the flats–most of them large–vacated by the Jews.
Howard Rhine, president of COLPA, described the ruling by the Court of Appeals as a “reaffirmation of the principle that the various civil rights lows and other protections of law apply to all minorities and not only selected ones.” Last May, COLPA and the Legal Aid Society, appealed a temporary injunction issued by NY Federal Judge Marvin E, Frankel barring the move of the Orthodox Jews into the apartments which was subsequently upheld by Judge Lasker.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
