Metropolitan Hous. Dev. Corp. v. VILLAGE OF ARLINGTON HTS., 72 C 1453.

• Decision Date: 22 February 1974
• Docket Number: No. 72 C 1453.,72 C 1453.
• Citation: 373 F. Supp. 208
• Parties: METROPOLITAN HOUSING DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION, an Illinois not-for-profit corporation, et al., Plaintiffs, v. The VILLAGE OF ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, a municipal corporation, et al., Defendants, and Northwest Opportunity Center, Inc., an Illinois not-for-profit corporation, et al., Plaintiffs-Intervenors.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

373 F. Supp. 208

METROPOLITAN HOUSING DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION, an Illinois not-for-profit corporation, et al., Plaintiffs, v. The VILLAGE OF ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, a municipal corporation, et al., Defendants and Northwest Opportunity Center, Inc., an Illinois not-for-profit corporation, et al., Plaintiffs-Intervenors.

No. 72 C 1453.

United States District Court, N. D. Illinois.

February 22, 1974.

F. Willis Caruso, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiffs.

Jack M. Siegel, Chicago, Ill., for defendants.

DECISION

McMILLEN, District Judge.

This case came on for trial on the merits, and the court has heard the evidence and considered the exhibits offered and received. The court has also considered the pre-trial stipulation and post-trial briefs filed by the parties and is fully advised in the premises. We find and conclude that judgment should be entered in behalf of all defendants, for the reasons stated hereinafter pursuant to F.R.C.P. 52(a).

Plaintiffs consist of a not-for-profit corporation created to develop housing for low and moderate income tenants and three individuals who seek to represent a class of such persons. The plaintiff corporation owns an option to purchase 15 acres of vacant land from its present owner, the Clerics of St. Viator. A second not-for-profit corporation intervened as a co-plaintiff but its presence is irrelevant to this Decision.

Plaintiffs contend that their civil rights have been violated by virtue of a decision of the trustees of the Village of Arlington Heights, Illinois, not to rezone the land in question for multiple family housing. Specifically, they allege in Count I that defendants have perpetuated racial segregation by declining to rezone and, in Count II, that the plaintiff corporation has been denied the right to use its property in a reasonable manner. This allegedly constitutes a violation of the plaintiffs' civil rights under Sec. 1981, 1982 or 1983 of the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1982 and 1983, and § 3601 et seq. respectively. No specific section of the Fair Housing Act is referred to in the pleadings and none seem applicable to the facts of this case.

Plaintiffs seek in the case at bar to extend the penumbra of the Fourteenth Amendment considerably beyond its present outer limits. They do not represent persons seeking to eliminate discrimination in existing facilities, whether residential or some other type. They do not represent a landowner seeking to use his property for some purpose within the existing zoning ordinances. Rather, the corporate plaintiff seeks to require defendants to rezone a vacant tract of land so that it can build a Federally subsidized low rent project on it, for occupancy by the class which the individual plaintiffs seek to represent. The justification proposed for using judicial processes to achieve rezoning is to supply housing for low income tenants who desire to work and live in the area. No cases have been cited by plaintiffs to support this extension of the Fourteenth Amendment into area-wide integration, but they rely primarily on familiar cases involving education, employment or public facilities. They also rely on Kennedy Park Homes Ass'n et al. v. City of Lackawanna, N. Y. et al., 436 F.2d 108 (2nd Cir. 1970), cert. den. 401 U.S. 1010, 91 S.Ct. 1256, 28 L.Ed.2d 546, where defendants acquired a tract for discriminatory reasons and were ordered to restore its prior status. We do not find that these authorities support the plaintiffs' objectives in the case at bar, notwithstanding their laudatory motives.

The litigability of this and other legal issues have been decided by our predecessor judge on appropriate motions, and we find no need to reexamine his conclusions. We assume for the purposes of this Decision that the plaintiff corporation has sufficient interest in this property to give it standing to sue. The essence of the alleged offense is the refusal of the Village to accommodate a landowner's desire to use his property as he sees fit, although the plaintiff corporation acquires no different status than any other corporation merely because it has been created for the purpose of developing housing for low income tenants.

The individual plaintiffs, in our opinion, do not represent a definable or manageable class. They purport to represent "low and moderate income minority-group members who work or desire to work in Arlington Heights but cannot find decent housing in Arlington Heights at rents they can afford". Obviously the members of this class would be too heterogeneous and varied to ever be brought into court, and their claims would raise a multitude of different factual questions. Nevertheless, one individual plaintiff, Electeria Muldonado, a Mexican-American, did appear and testify, and her presence along with the corporate plaintiff suffices to raise a case or controversy concerning the validity of the defendants' acts. Since we intend to decide this issue on its merits, we see no purpose to be served by debating the question of standing any further.

Defendants are accused of failing and refusing to rezone the 15 acre tract from an R-3 single-family detached residence use to an R-5 multi-family attached residence use (such as apartments). Plaintiffs took the necessary administrative steps to obtain rezoning and made various changes in its proposal in an attempt to satisfy various objections which were raised by the Village's Plan Commission. Ultimately, however, the Plan Commission recommended against rezoning the property and the defendant trustees voted 6 to 1 against the proposition on September 28, 1971. Plaintiffs allege that this vote was motivated at least in part by racial discrimination against certain minority groups who work in or around Arlington Heights.

There is no direct evidence by which to determine the motives or mental processes of the trustees, and plaintiffs depend on circumstantial evidence. The crucial fact question, however, is whether the result of the defendant trustees' action caused racial discrimination. As has often been stated, (e. g. Gautreaux et al. v. Romney, 448 F.2d 731 at 738 (7th Cir. 1971)), motives are irrelevant if the effect is illegal. If it is, we would reach the legal question of whether defendants can be required to change the zoning of the property.

Plaintiffs have failed to carry their burden of proving discrimination by defendants against...