Newport Denies Ban on Poor, Minorities in Housing Lawsuit

The City of Newport Beach denied in court documents filed Friday that it has prevented poor people and minorities from moving there, arguing that it has made progress in providing low-income housing.

In 1980, the city was sued by a group of low-income Southern California residents who claimed that housing regulations in the pricey coastal area discriminated against them because of their incomes and ethnicities.

On Friday, the city’s attorneys filed a 347-page closing argument in a trial that dates back to September, 1985, and produced 15,000 pages of transcript and 1,400 exhibits.

Scathing Attack

The massive document presents a scathing attack on the plaintiffs’ own closing argument, the premise of the lawsuit itself and the credibility of expert witnesses called by the plaintiffs.

“The totality of evidence demonstrates that this 6 1/2-year-long lawsuit has been a crusade against a stereotype city that exists only in the minds of plaintiffs’ attorneys,” the document reads. “From the date of its commencement, this litigation has represented wild accusations in a fruitless search for supporting evidence.”

Attorneys for the plaintiffs are scheduled to file a written rebuttal to the Newport Beach arguments by Nov. 24. At that point, Superior Court Judge Leonard Goldstein will probably take the matter under submission, ruling at a later date.

Most of the nine plaintiffs in “Davis vs. Newport Beach” are low-income people who pay high rents for housing they say is substandard. They would like to live in Newport Beach for its amenities and its attractive job market, they say, but they cannot afford the rents.

The suit is named for Olive Davis, who lives in a Santa Ana mobile home and spends more than 30% of her income on housing, the lawsuit says. Even though she owns her mobile home and now receives a rent subsidy, Davis would like to move to Newport Beach because of her neighborhood’s crime problems.

Goal Is Affordable Housing

The lawsuit asks Goldstein to rule that the city’s land-use regulations are unconstitutional and violate state law. Its ultimate goal is to force the city to build more affordable housing.

Legal experts say the lawsuit is the first of its kind to be tried in the United States and that its outcome could affect the future of affordable housing throughout California.

During the trial and in their own closing document filed Oct. 8, plaintiffs’ attorneys Crystal Sims and Jonathan Lehrer-Graiwer argued that expert witnesses, demographic information and the actions of Newport Beach officials proved that the city’s housing policies unjustly exclude the poor and the dark-skinned.

But the document filed Friday by the city’s attorneys attacked those arguments, claiming that there is no evidence that Newport Beach is “a stereotype city--a mythical evil empire.”

The city’s document stated, among other things, that:

- One expert’s testimony “exemplifies the adage that ‘statistics do not lie, but liars use statistics,’ ” the document said.

- Another expert “was led down a primrose path by plaintiffs’ counsel, believing that, by merely skimming a boxful of pre-selected documents and reviewing a written script of her testimony, she would be qualified to testify against Newport Beach and make that stereotyped city pay for its affluence.”

- “. . . the facts are not so simple as the plaintiffs’ breezy arguments suggest,” the document reads. “While plaintiffs’ approach results in a considerably shorter closing argument that more easily translates into media headlines, completeness and accuracy are sacrificed.”

- And that, according to the 1980 census, 50% of the households in Newport Beach qualified as very low-, low- or moderate-income households, based upon the median household income for Orange County in 1980.

According to the city’s document, among the most damaging evidence Sims and Lehrer-Graiwer could uncover in their six-year investigation was two isolated racist statements made by city residents at public hearings and the reduction of density in one housing project.

In addition, the closing argument attacked the plaintiffs themselves, charging that the women and men involved had virtually no contact with the city, were unfamiliar with the city’s housing policies and were unfamiliar with the complaint filed six years ago on their own behalf.

“None of the plaintiffs testified to any specific actions of the city which caused them injury and presented no evidence of the city’s denial of any lower income or subsidized housing proposal,” the document said.

“The plaintiffs’ lawsuit claims that the government of the City of Newport Beach undertook activities to keep people out of the city, to prevent them from living in the city based upon their income and their ethnic background,” said Joel D. Kuperberg, a lawyer for the city. “It is the city’s position that there is no evidence of any activities by the city government to do those things.”

Kuperberg said he did not know if Newport Beach officials would choose to appeal if Goldstein ruled against them. “We’re cautiously optimistic that we’re going to win it,” he said, “so we’re not even thinking in terms of appeal.”