ADC's latest letters on Westchester

Westchester Case

June 14, 2013 — Nearly four years after the entry of the Consent Decree, the U.S. Attorney, HUD, and the Monitor need to stop pretending that progress has been made and concentrate on holding Westchester accountable for all of its Consent Decree violations.

The letters that we dispatched earlier this week provide the evidence that Westchester has failed both in meeting its unit-specific obligations and in meeting its other obligations under the text of the Consent Decree.

A consent decree is a court order. When one compares its actual text with Westchester’s conduct, it becomes unmistakeable that Westchester has not been the victim of overreaching by the federal government or by the Monitor, but rather has been the beneficiary of the failure on the part of the U.S. Attorney, HUD, and the Monitor to enforce the Decree.

Consent Decree 101: This court order contains both analysis requirements and action requirements. Too much attention has been paid to the analysis requirements, and not enough to the action requirements.

Read the letters:

Kennedy 2013 06 13
We ask whether the U.S. Attorney disagrees with any of 25 propositions that make clear the wide range of Westchester's non-compliance.
Jones 2013 06 13
We highlight the reasons why the Deputy Secretary was wrong in saying that Westchester was ahead of its unit-specific benchmarks.
Johnson 2013 06 12
This letter explains the reason why the Monitor is correct to look at the County’s Housing Allocation Plan, but incomplete in his characterizations of which municipalities have restrictive zoning practices. It goes on to explain the impact of the exclusionary zoning in place in Westchester’s municipalities, and reminds the Monitor that Westchester’s failure to act against these municipalities represents violations of the two critical provisions of paragraph (7)(j) of the Decree.
Johnson 2009 08 24
This letter, written only two weeks after the entry of the Consent Decree, warned that “appeasement only emboldens resistance.” That advice, based on the history of resistance to civil rights enforcement, was ignored, and the promise of the Consent Decree accordingly squandered. This 2009 letter is referenced in the June 13, 2013 letter to HUD Deputy Secretary Jones.