A House Divided

By Ed Magnuson

In the long struggle against racial discrimination in America, progress has been vast, if uneven and too slow. Barriers against equal access to public accommodations have fallen, voting rights of all citizens have been guaranteed, and blacks have assumed impressive political power in cities and state legislatures. Job opportunities have opened, and the once violent outcry against school desegregation has been muted. But the more intimate, elemental question of whether blacks can live beside whites has remained volatile, pitting neighbors against neighbors, the courts against communities, and a sense of social fairness against the besieged mentality of those who fear change.

The sad fact is that two decades after the Kerner Commission warned that the U.S. was "moving toward two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal," the nation remains dismayingly segregated in its housing patterns. A recent study by the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank, found that 57% of American whites live in census tracts that are more than 99% white and nearly a third of all blacks live in neighborhoods that are more than 90% black. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates that 2 million people encounter racial discrimination in housing every year. Last week the Senate passed a new, tougher Fair Housing Act that will finally make it easier for the Federal Government to assist victims of discrimination in suing landlords and real estate agents who block their access to housing.

Nowhere has the shifting frontier of the civil rights struggle been more apparent than in Yonkers, a racially divided blue-collar suburb of New York City. Last week Leonard Sand, a soft-spoken, patient federal judge, got fed up with that city's refusal over three years to carry out his orders to place public housing in its white neighborhoods. Gazing down sternly from his bench in Manhattan at four Yonkers councilmen, the jurist delivered a tongue- lashing. "What we're clearly confronted with is a total breakdown of any sense of responsibility," he charged. "What we have here is a competition to see . . . who can be the biggest political martyr. There does have to come a moment of truth, a moment when the city of Yonkers seeks not to become a national symbol of defiance to civil rights."

With that, Judge Sand declared Yonkers in contempt of court for refusing to obey his order to help private developers build 800 units of moderate-income housing. The judge began levying fines that doubled daily against the city and would leave it bankrupt later this month. Yonkers promptly lost its already poor bond rating, rendering it unable to borrow. Fines of $500 a day were imposed on the recalcitrant councilmen.

Situated immediately north of New York City's poor and crime-plagued borough of the Bronx, Yonkers (pop. 191,000) is divided into a predominantly black and Hispanic western section and white eastern neighborhoods. In December 1980, Jimmy Carter's Justice Department charged that both the Yonkers school board and its city council had deliberately discriminated against its minority residents (now 19% of the population), a finding based on a well-documented record going back nearly 40 years. The suit was pressed by the Reagan Administration, which led to Judge Sand's orders in November 1985 for both local bodies to produce desegregation plans. Yonkers thus became the first case in which the Justice Department charged that school and housing discrimination were intertwined and had to be dealt with concurrently.

The school board responded positively, creating a system of academically enriched "magnet" schools and the voluntary busing of some 10,000 of the district's 18,000 students. Now all but one of the city's 30 schools are racially integrated. But the Yonkers city government balked. By then it had already created 42 public-assistance projects, all but three of them in black neighborhoods. Instead of proposing a list of sites for similar housing in the white section, as Sand had directed, the city merely promised not to discriminate in the future.

The judge then drew on Justice Department proposals to order his own housing plan into effect. He directed Yonkers to build 200 units of low-income public housing on seven east-side sites and to stimulate the private development of federally subsidized rental housing for families with incomes of between $15,000 and $32,000. The seven-member council reluctantly agreed to move ahead on the 200 units, selecting sites for low-level townhouse dwellings.

But when, on July 26, Sand ordered the council to approve a package of zoning changes and tax-abatement incentives for the 800 moderate-income units, resistance peaked among white residents. Many had fled the Bronx to escape the deterioration of what were once tranquil neighborhoods. Their life savings were invested in their new homes, which they now saw as threatened.

Moreover, white residents considered themselves unfairly targeted by the Justice Department and the judge. Yonkers already encompasses 40% of the public housing in Westchester County. Smaller, more affluent neighboring suburbs have no public housing at all and are nearly lily-white. "If Yonkers had never created housing for its poor, it wouldn't be in this situation," argues Peter Salins, chairman of the department of urban affairs at New York City's Hunter College. Nationwide, many cities tear down slums and build public housing on the same segregated sites. Why, residents ask, should Yonkers be punished for doing this too?

Such feelings led to an emotional city council meeting last week to consider Sand's order. Democratic Mayor Nicholas Wasicsko and two councilmen decided to vote for the court's housing plan rather than see Yonkers go bankrupt. They were overridden by a four-man majority, led by Republican Vice Mayor Henry Spallone, who called the Federal Government "a slumlord" and the judge's plan "slow poison." Explained Conservative Councilman Edward Fagan: "The people wanted this act of defiance."

While Sand gave the four holdouts until Aug. 10 to reverse their negative votes or face jail terms, Yonkers appealed the contempt finding to higher courts. Invited by the judge to remove the rebellious officials, New York Governor Mario Cuomo instead deferred to the state's Emergency Financial Control Board, an agency that oversees Yonkers' shaky finances. Cuomo further muddied the waters by observing that Yonkers officials might be able to persuade Judge Sand to modify his ruling. Grandstanding politicians in the Yonkers stalemate could find a guiding example of courageous leadership in Boston. Neighborhood resistance to the integration of public projects in Irish South Boston is at least as intense as that in the New York suburb. Mayor Ray Flynn, who lives in Southie, began his political career in the mid-1970s as a community leader in the disastrous fight against school desegregation. But now Flynn is working with black and white community groups and federal officials to resolve rather than raise conflict. Last month two black families became the first in more than a decade to move into public housing in South Boston. Instead of protests designed to inflame passions, the initial move was preceded by prayer services encouraging goodwill, and it was completed in peace.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME Chart by Joe Lertola

[TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Source: Population Studies Center, University of Michigan. Based on 1980 census.}]CAPTION: HOUSING SEGREGATION INDEX

DESCRIPTION: Degree of housing segregation in several United States cities.

With reporting by Janice C. Simpson/Yonkers