Heights Community Congress v. Hilltop Realty, Inc., C79-422.
| Decision Date | 30 November 1983 |
| Docket Number | No. C79-422.,C79-422. |
| Citation | 629 F. Supp. 1232 |
| Parties | HEIGHTS COMMUNITY CONGRESS, et al., Plaintiffs, v. HILLTOP REALTY, INC., et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Ohio |
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Avery S. Friedman, Kathryn Gonser Eloff, and Donald K. Barclay, Cleveland, Ohio, for plaintiffs.
Anthony J. DiVenere, Burke, Haber & Berick, Richard A. Dean, Arter & Hadden and Harvey B. Bruner, Bruner & Shafran, Cleveland, Ohio, for defendants.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
I. BACKGROUND 1241
II. ALLEGED SECTION 3604(a) 1249
VIOLATIONS
III. ALLEGED SECTIONS 3604(c) AND 1294
3604(e) VIOLATIONS
IV. STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS 1303
V. LIABILITY OF VINCENT T. AVENI 1303
VI. INJURIES AND RELIEF 1305
VII. ORDER 1309
Tried to this court, the action of plaintiffs Heights Community Congress (also HCC or the Congress) and the City of Cleveland Heights (also City or Cleveland Heights) is based on Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, otherwise known as the Fair Housing Act, section 801 et seq., 42 U.S.C. § 3601, et seq. (1977). Plaintiffs assert claims against Hilltop Realty, Inc. (now known as HGM/Hilltop), its president and certain sales agents.
Plaintiffs allege that Heights Community Congress, a not-for-profit corporation organized under the laws of the State of Ohio, seeks to promote and maintain Cleveland Heights as an open and integrated community, and has "endeavored to achieve this objective through the processes of education, negotiation, publication, community organization and litigation." Plaintiffs further allege that the City of Cleveland Heights is a municipal corporation organized and existing under the laws of the State of Ohio. Plaintiff City seeks to continue to be a stable, integrated community, without resegregation in any part, for the benefit of its residents and all those who choose to live there. The City has expended substantial monies, primarily through federal grants, on programs designed and implemented to accomplish these objectives.
The case proceeded to trial on Counts II and III of the plaintiffs' complaint.1
In their second cause of action, plaintiffs allege:
Plaintiff Heights Community Congress has monitored the activities of the defendants since 1973 and found a pattern and practice of racially discriminatory housing practices by the defendants including locational steering by race, racial remarks, racial disparity in financing, racial differentiation in treatment and racially inconsistent advertising.
In prosecuting this cause of action, plaintiffs charge defendants Hilltop, Vincent T. Aveni, John Mayfield, Evelyn Gardner and Shirley Bernstein with violations of 42 U.S.C. § 3604(a) and (c).
In the third cause of action, plaintiffs assert unlawful discriminatory housing practices against sales agents of the defendant Hilltop Realty, noting among other things that within six months of the filing of the complaint "two (2) of defendant's agents have been convicted in the Cleveland Heights Municipal Court of violations of the City's anti-solicitation ordinance." In prosecuting this cause of action, plaintiffs charge a violation of 42 U.S.C. § 3604(e) against defendants Val Vrana and Bruce Johanns.
The defendants generally deny the allegations of plaintiffs in the second and third causes of action. In addition, defendants continue to assert that neither the City nor Heights Community Congress has established the necessary elements of standing to assert their claims in this action. The defendants further assert that both the City and HCC have failed to establish a causal relationship between alleged conduct of defendants and any alleged injuries.
After a 12-week trial, counsel submitted post-trial briefs and argued the case orally on June 17, 1983. Thereupon, the case was submitted to the court for decision.
Plaintiff City of Cleveland Heights is a municipal corporation organized and existing under the laws of the State of Ohio and was chartered in 1921. The City is continguous to Cleveland on the west, East Cleveland and Cleveland on the north, South Euclid and University Heights on the east, and Shaker Heights on the South. The City's government includes a council, a council-elected mayor and a council-appointed city manager.
Professor Oliver Schroeder2 testified as to the diversity of the City. He described Cleveland Heights as a "built-up community" of used homes with a wide variety of styles and with house prices ranging from $30,000 to $250,000. Professor Schroeder observed that Cleveland Heights has "unique citizens," e.g., "45 percent of the Cleveland Orchestra live in Cleveland Heights." The City is "heavily professional," and among its residents are employees of the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals. The City has a broad religious make-up, including a "strong Jewish population," a "sizeable Catholic population," and "strong Protestant churches."
Professor Schroeder described two home bombings in Cleveland Heights that were related to race. In October 1965, a house near Euclid Heights Boulevard was bombed. It was the home "in which the new director of the Karamu Theater, a black man and his family, had moved in." The mayor and council issued a proclamation. As its author, Professor Schroeder remembers that the proclamation declared that the community was an open community, that any individuals who wished to conduct themselves in an orderly manner could buy in Cleveland Heights, and that all of the forces of police investigation would be used to prohibit "this kind of violation occurring in the community."
While Professor Schroeder was mayor in 1972, a home on Brinkmore in the northeast section of Cleveland Heights, owned by a black family, was bombed. When the bombing occurred, the mayor visited Mrs. Appling's home and viewed the destruction. He reported:
I assured her that just because she was black, this should never have happened, that we wanted her as a citizen and a resident of Cleveland Heights, and we hoped that we could help her get her home restored.
A meeting of residents of the street was organized, which the mayor attended. He recommended that the residents create a street club to "give themselves protection and to build up an esprit de corps for their street and for their neighborhood that would continue to make it a very worthwhile place in which to live."
The change in demographics in Cleveland Heights in the decade 1970-1980 is demonstrated in the evidence. According to the United States census, Cleveland Heights had a population in 1970 of 57,767 and in 1980 a population of 56,438. In 1970, the census percentage of black residents in Cleveland Heights was 2.5 percent. By 1980, the census showed that the percentage of blacks in Cleveland Heights had grown to 24.9 percent (other minorities comprised an additional 2.1 percent).3
Census data for the 17 census tracts within the City reveal that in 1970 census tracts 1401 and 1405 each had zero percent black. The remaining 15 tracts ranged from a low of .5 percent black in census tract 1402, to 9.0 percent in census tract 1406. Census data for 1980 show a black population in each of the 17 census tracts. However, as the court noted in its March 17, 1983 memorandum and order, using the average black population for the City "conceals substantially higher non-white percentages in certain areas of the city." Census tract 1413 had a black population of 5.8 percent, while census tract 1403 had a black population of 53.7 percent. Breaking the census tracts into two groups, eight range from 5.8 percent black to 15.9 percent black, and nine census tracts range from 24.0 percent black to 53.7 percent black, as the chart in the margin illustrates.4
Adjacent to Cleveland Heights, to the north, the city of East Cleveland experienced a dramatic rise in the black population in the late sixties. The 1970 census showed the black population at 58.6 percent. By 1980 the census showed a black population increase to 86.5 percent. This percentage indicates that overall, East Cleveland has become resegregated.5
Cleveland Heights census tract 1403 is 53.7 percent black, the highest concentration of blacks in a Cleveland Heights tract. It rose from .7 percent in 1970. Tract 1403 is adjacent to East Cleveland census tract 1502, which had an increase in its black population from 10.4 percent in 1970 to 65.3 percent in 1980. It is interesting to note that within Cleveland Heights tract 1403 there also is an ascertainable housing pattern. Within tract 1403, census block group 2 is 12 percent black according to 1980 census data. Block group 2 is located in the southeast corner of 1403 and at the point furthest away from East Cleveland. Moving toward East Cleveland, the next census block group is block group 1. Its population is 39.5 percent black. Successively closer to East Cleveland the percentages of blacks in block groups 3, 4, 6 and 5 are 55, 80, 80, and 67, respectively.
Social statistician Edward J. McNeeley of the Cuyahoga Plan of Ohio, Inc.,6 was asked on cross-examination by counsel for defendants, "Now, again, looking at Cleveland Heights figures as a whole, if we look at the figures from 1970 in your first report, which goes, I believe to '77, and in your last report which takes it to 1980, is it fair to say that the greatest rate of change in the non-white minority population was in the early part of the decade, the first part of the decade, '70—'75?" Mr. McNeeley answered, "I would say until '76 but, yes." Answering a follow-up question as to whether this rate of change "lessened...
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