[StBernard] Black renters raise tensions in Bay Area

Westley Annis westley at da-parish.com
Tue Dec 30 23:10:39 EST 2008


Black renters raise tensions in Bay Area
Longtime homeowners say new arrivals bring crime and other troubles
The Associated Press
updated 4:50 p.m. CT, Tues., Dec. 30, 2008
ANTIOCH, Calif. - As more and more black renters began moving into this
mostly white San Francisco Bay Area suburb a few years ago, neighbors
started complaining about loud parties, mean pit bulls, blaring car radios,
prostitution, drug dealing and muggings of schoolchildren.

In 2006, as the influx reached its peak, the police department formed a
special crime-fighting unit to deal with the complaints, and authorities
began cracking down on tenants in federally subsidized housing.

Now that police unit is the focus of lawsuits by black families who allege
the city of 100,000 is orchestrating a campaign to drive them out.

"A lot of people are moving out here looking for a better place to live,"
said Karen Coleman, a mother of three who came here five years ago from a
blighted neighborhood in nearby Pittsburg. "We are trying to raise our kids
like everyone else. But they don't want us here."

City officials deny the allegations in the lawsuits, which were filed last
spring and seek unspecified damages.

Across the country, similar tensions have simmered when federally subsidized
renters escaped run-down housing projects and violent neighborhoods by
moving to nicer communities in suburban Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles.

But the friction in Antioch is "hotter than elsewhere," said U.S. Department
of Housing and Urban Development spokesman Larry Bush.

An increasing number of poor families receiving federal rental assistance
have been moving here in recent years, partly because of the housing crisis.

A growing number of landlords were seeking a guaranteed source of revenue in
a city hard-hit by foreclosures. They began offering their Antioch homes to
low-income tenants in the HUD Section 8 housing program, which pays about
two-thirds of every tenant's rent.

Between 2000 and 2007, Antioch's black population nearly doubled from 8,824
to 16,316. And the number of Antioch renters receiving federal subsidies
climbed almost 50 percent between 2003 and 2007 to 1,582, the majority of
them black.

'Complete madness'
Longtime homeowners complained that the new arrivals brought crime and other
troubles. In 2006, violent crime in Antioch shot up about 19 percent from
the year before, while property crime went down slightly.

"In some neighborhoods, it was complete madness," said longtime resident
David Gilbert, a black retiree who organized the United Citizens of Better
Neighborhoods watch group. "They were under siege."

So the Antioch police in mid-2006 created the Community Action Team, which
focused on complaints of trouble at low-income renters' homes.

Police sent 315 complaints about subsidized tenants to the Contra Costa
Housing Authority, which manages the federal program in the city, and urged
the agency to evict many of them for lease violations such as drug use or
gun possession. Lawyers for the tenants said 70 percent of the eviction
recommendations were aimed at black renters. The housing authority turned
down most of the requests.


Coleman said the police, after a complaint from a neighbor, showed up at her
house one morning in 2007 to check on her husband, who was on parole for
drunken driving. She said they searched the house and returned twice more
that summer to try to find out whether the couple had violated any terms of
their lease that could lead to eviction.

The Colemans were also slapped with a restraining order after a neighbor
accused them of "continually harassing and threatening their family,"
according to court papers. The Colemans said a judge later rescinded the
order.

Coleman and four other families are suing Antioch, accusing police of
engaging in racial discrimination and conducting illegal searches without
warrants. They have asked a federal judge to make their suit a class-action
on behalf of hundreds of other black renters. Another family has filed a
lawsuit accusing the city's leaders of waging a campaign of harassment to
drive them out.

Police referred questions to the city attorney's office.

City denies charges
City Attorney Lynn Tracy Nerland denied any discrimination on the part of
police and said officers were responding to crime reports in troubled
neighborhoods when they discovered that a large number of the troublemakers
were receiving federal subsidies.

"They are responding to real problems," Nerland said.

Joseph Villarreal, the housing authority chief, said the problems in Antioch
mirror tensions seen nationally when poor renters move into neighborhoods
they can afford only with government help.

"One of the goals of the programs is to de-concentrate poverty," Villarreal
said. "There are just some people who don't want to spend public money that
way."

Tensions like those afflicting Antioch have drawn scholars and law
enforcement officials to debate whether crime follows subsidized renters out
of the tenements to the suburbs.

Susan Popkin, a researcher at the nonprofit Urban Institute, said she does
not believe that is the case. But the tensions, she said, are real.

"That can be a recipe for anxiety," she said. "It can really change the
demographics of a neighborhood."


Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28437716/?gt1=43001




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