You enable segregation, mayor told
A civil rights group is demanding to depose Mayor de Blasio about a policy he supports that the organization says makes racial and economic segregation of neighborhoods worse.
In offering affordable apartments, 50% of the units go to residents already living in the community district where the apartments are located, and 50% to outsiders.
The AntiDiscrimination Center charges in a pending lawsuit that this policy effectively discourages outsiders from moving into neighborhoods that are heavily one ethnicity and reinforces segregation.
The group’s attorney Craig Gurian filed a motion in Manhattan Federal Court on Monday demanding that de Blasio submit to questioning to explain his support for this “community preference” protocol.
Gurian notes that de Blasio has recently stated that city schools are racially segregated because of the makeup of the neighborhoods where they’re located, quoting the mayor as stating, “We cannot change the basic reality of housing in New York City.”
Gurian argues that de Blasio needs to be questioned about why he supports a policy that his own deputies have admitted makes racial integration more difficult.
In an earlier deposition, de Blasio’s former housing commissioner, Vicki Been, pressed for a lower community preference percentage of 30%.
But de Blasio (photo) rejected that, keeping the 50% rule in place. “It is the mayor’s reasons — why and how he weighed various considerations in coming to his decision — that only he can answer,” Gurian wrote.
The mayor’s office declined to comment.