U.S. v. City of Parma, Ohio

• Citation: 661 F.2d 562
• Decision Date: 14 October 1981
• Docket Number: No. 81-3031,81-3031
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. CITY OF PARMA, OHIO, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (6th Circuit)

Page 562

661 F.2d 562

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. CITY OF PARMA, OHIO, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 81-3031.

United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.

Argued June 16, 1981.

Decided Oct. 14, 1981.

Robert R. Soltis, Andrew Boyko, Sol., Parma, Ohio, for defendant-appellant.

Michael L. Barrett, Brian Heffernan, Theodore M. Shaw, Miriam R. Eisenstein, Walter W. Barnett, James P. Turner, Dept. of Justice, Civ. Rights Div., Washington, D. C., for plaintiff-appellee.

Before LIVELY, KEITH and MERRITT, Circuit Judges.

LIVELY, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from the final decision of the district court in an action under the Fair Housing Act of 1968, Pub.L. 90-284, Title VIII, § 801 et seq., 42 U.S.C. § 3601 et seq. (Title VIII or the Act). The district court found that the City of Parma had engaged in a number of acts which had the purpose and effect of maintaining Parma as a segregated community in violation of the Act. A broad remedial order was entered.

I.

A.

The Attorney General filed the present action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio on April 27, 1973 seeking to enjoin Parma from violating the Act. ¹ Such an action by the Attorney General is authorized by § 813 of the Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3613 ² if the conditions of that section are met. Parma filed a counterclaim in which it requested that a three-judge court be convened; this request was denied. Thereafter the defendant filed a motion for summary judgment, which was denied by the district court in an order which identified three material issues of fact in dispute:

1. Whether Parma's virtually all-white character occurred adventitiously as a result of unrestricted free choice in the market place as defendant contends or whether it resulted from deliberate discrimination which was caused or perpetuated by defendant's conduct;

2. Whether successive decisions by defendant City of Parma or by and through its officials which resulted in the exclusion of various types of federally subsidized and potentially integrated housing had the purpose or effect of making housing unavailable to persons because of race; and

3. Whether Forest City's proposal to construct Parmatown Woods was rejected solely on nondiscriminatory grounds, as Parma contends, or was treated less favorably than other proposals, wholly or partially because of the actual or anticipated race of some of the prospective residents.

United States v. City of Parma, 471 F.Supp. 453, 454-55 (N.D.Ohio 1979).

B.

Following a trial on the issue of liability the district court concluded that the record established Parma's violation of the Act in a series of actions which had both the purpose and effect of maintaining Parma as a virtually all-white community. United States v. City of Parma, Ohio, 494 F.Supp. 1049 (N.D.Ohio 1980). The court made two initial findings:

An extreme condition of racial segregation exists in the Cleveland metropolitan area.

Id. at 1055; and

The proposition that the Cleveland metropolitan area and Parma became racially segregated solely as a result of associational preferences and economics, and not because of racial discrimination, is refuted overwhelmingly by the evidence in this case.

Id. at 1057. The court then made nine findings on the causes of the "dual housing market" which is found to exist in the Cleveland metropolitan area. In addition to private activities such as discriminatory acts of real estate dealers, "red lining" by lenders and insurers and refusals to list or sell by private owners, the court found that policies of the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration, particularly with respect to restrictive covenants, and site and tenant selection practices of the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) had contributed to and maintained a black ghetto on the east side of Cleveland. Id. at 1057-59.

Parma, the largest suburb of Cleveland, lies west of the Cuyahoga River. According to the 1970 census, Parma had a population of 100,216 of whom 50 were black. The same census disclosed that metropolitan Cleveland had a population of 2,064,194 of whom 332,614 were black. Thus while the metropolitan area had a black population of 16%, Parma's was a small fraction of one per cent. The largest concentration of black residents was in the east side of the City of Cleveland and in a few eastern suburbs. The district court rejected Parma's two explanations for the segregated condition of the Cleveland area associational preference and economic factors. In doing so, the court considered expert testimony from both parties and concluded that the experts produced by the government supported their conclusions better than those who testified for the City. Id. at 1059-65.

The district court then considered the evidence which the government had introduced to prove that Parma had followed racially exclusionary policies and practices. This evidence included testimony that Parma had a reputation and image of being the Cleveland suburb most hostile to blacks and statements of elected officials of Parma which were either overtly racist or were found to have racist meanings. These findings were cited as the backdrop against which the government challenged five specific actions or series of actions in this lawsuit:

A) Parma's refusal to enact a fair housing resolution welcoming "all persons of goodwill";

B) Parma's general opposition to all forms of public and low-income housing;

C) Parma's denial of building permits for a privately-sponsored low-income housing development Parmatown Woods;

D) Parma's enactment and application of four land use ordinances which impose height, parking and voter approval limitations on housing developments; and

E) Parma's refusal to submit an adequate housing assistance plan in connection with its application for Community Development Block Grant Funds.

Id. at 1066. Each of these actions of the defendant was then discussed at length.

The district court concluded that the rejection by the Parma City Council of a "weak resolution" of welcome in the face of intense local opposition was a symbol of the official attitude and "sent out the message that black people of goodwill were not welcome." Id. at 1068. In reaching this conclusion the court rejected the mayor's testimony that he opposed the resolution only because it was superfluous in view of state law which provided for fair housing.

The district court reviewed the history of public housing in the Cleveland metropolitan area and noted that most of the conventional public housing in the area had been built inside Cleveland. A severe shortage of public housing was found to exist in the area, and this shortage was attributed directly to the exclusion of such housing from the suburbs. Parma was found to have a genuine need for public housing. Moreover, more than 1300 families living inside Cleveland and eligible for public housing had expressed an interest in moving to Parma. Parma had refused to participate in programs of the CMHA which would have brought low-income housing to the City. The district court determined that Parma's failure to seek and provide low-income housing was based on a desire to keep minorities out of the community and concluded that "Parma's opposition to any form of public or low-income housing has had an acute and foreseeable segregative effect on this virtually all-white city." Id. at 1072. The court again rejected explanations for the City's actions put forward by the mayor in his testimony.

One of the acts which precipitated the citizens' suit was Parma's rejection of a proposal by a private builder to construct a federally subsidized multiple-family housing project to be called Parmatown Woods. Building permits for Parmatown Woods were denied after review by Parma officials. The stated reason for the denial was the developer's failure to comply with Parma's land use ordinances. The court found that Parma had not required strict compliance with all its ordinances and procedures in at least four other instances involving apartment projects, one a "luxury" multi-family development by the same organization which proposed to build Parmatown Woods. The court detailed the widespread opposition to Parmatown Woods revealed by the evidence and concluded that it was racially motivated. It was during pendency of the Parmatown Woods proposal that both the mayor and the president of the city council were found to have made public racist statements. Id. at 1079-80.

The district court stated its ultimate finding with respect to the Parmatown Woods denial as follows:

The Court finds that an important reason for the denial of the building permits was the fear that blacks would live in Parmatown Woods. This fear resulted in deviations from standard procedure and substantive norms and rendered impracticable, if not impossible, compliance with the land-use ordinances.

Id. at 1074. The developers abandoned Parmatown Woods and built a similar project in a village adjacent to Parma.

The day before the Parmatown Woods application was rejected the voters of Parma adopted two land use ordinances by referendum. One ordinance limited all future residential structures to a height of 35 feet (Parmatown Woods, with 10 floors, would have been much higher) and the other required voter approval for the development, construction or acquisition of a subsidized housing project by a public body or participation by individuals or non-public bodies in any federal rent subsidy program. The initiative petitions which resulted in placing these ordinances on the ballot were circulated during the period when the Parmatown Woods proposal was being debated publicly. The court recognized that there had been opposition to high-rise construction in Parma for some time and that many residents opposed such construction for non-racial reasons. Nevertheless, the court found persuasive evidence to indicate that racial considerations were...