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Suit Challenges Brooklyn Housing Project As Favoring Hasidic Residents of Area

By Howard M. Friedman

The Brooklyn Paper reported yesterday on a state court lawsuit filed in New York by a coalition of forty excluded community groups in North Brooklyn claiming religious and racially discriminatory impacts from a proposed Broadway Triangle rezoning plan. The plan calls for converting 31 acres of former industrial land in East Williamsburg into a mixed-income community with much of the area reserved for below-market-rate housing. Two non-profit groups-- United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizen Council-- were given no-bid contracts to develop the area.

There is a long history of tension between the Hispanic and Hasidic communities in the area. Plaintiffs claim that the Williamsburg Hasidic community has been the beneficiary of racial quotas despite federal court orders calling for an end to discriminatory practices. The waiting list for low-income housing is 90% Hispanic and African-American, while almost 50% of the 2,000 public housing units in the area are occupied by Hasidic Jews. (See prior related posting.) According to the New York Daily News, the lawsuit charges, among other things, that limiting buildings in the rezoned area to 8-stories favors Orthodox Jews who cannot ride elevators on the Sabbath, while taller buildings would create more housing. The rezoning project however does have support from both Catholic and Hasidic groups and from some politicians. the rezoning still has to be approved by the City Planning Commission. [Thanks to Steven H. Sholk for the lead.]

Full post as published by Religion Clause on September 11, 2009 (boomark / email).