Newport Beach Cleared in Housing-Bias Suit : City Officials Hail Judge’s Ruling in 7-Year-Old Case as Preserving Local Control of Zoning

A Superior Court judge ruled Thursday that Newport Beach has not violated state or federal laws prohibiting housing discrimination, in a decision hailed by city officials as preserving local control over zoning.

The ruling came in a 7-year-old lawsuit that had challenged city housing policies and zoning practices as discriminatory.

“I’m just real excited,” said Mayor Pro Tem Evelyn R. Hart. “In my opinion it’s a very important case for the cities of California. We had to defend ourselves against the threat of losing local zoning control.

“We also had to fight to prove we’re not racially prejudiced. In my opinion, this was a trumped up charge.”

Joel D. Kuperberg, an attorney for the city, said the plaintiffs, a group of low-income people, had failed in their most basic objective: to prove that the city’s predominantly wealthy population was a result of discriminatory actions by municipal government.

$1.2 Million in Legal Fees

The case, which has cost the city $1.2 million in legal fees so far, involved 11 months of trial, 15,000 pages of transcripts and 1,400 exhibits. Lawyers challenging the city had hoped the case would produce more stringent constitutional safeguards for equal housing standards.

“It’s kind of a shame that we would have to spend that much in taxpayer dollars to be found not guilty,” said Robert L. Wynn, city manager for the last 17 years.

“Our basic defense is that that was not true and that it was the land values in Newport Beach that were difficult to work around to provide large amounts of moderate or low-cost housing.”

Crystal S. Sims, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Orange County who represented the plaintiffs, said there would be no decision for several days on whether to appeal.

“I’m obviously disappointed in the decision,” said Sims, who added that she believes Newport Beach has substantially changed its housing policies since the lawsuit was filed. Newport Beach, she said, is no longer “the same city it was in 1980.”

“The city has taken some significant steps to provide affordable housing.”

Since the lawsuit was filed in 1980, the city has rejoined a federal program providing subsidies for low-income housing and has deleted discriminatory language in laws, Sims said. She also credited the city with recent efforts to aid homeless people.

Newport Beach has spent about $2.5 million in the last five years subsidizing developers who want to provide low- and moderate-income housing, according to Robert P. Lenard, a city housing official who spent 31 days on the witness stand during the trial.

166 Units Constructed

Those funds have resulted in building 166 units of low-income housing, Lenard said.

Newport Beach has a population of 70,000 and an estimated median household income of $59,462, contrasted with $42,564 for Orange County as a whole.

Sims tried in written arguments to portray the city’s housing policies as out of “the discredited and dying molds of cities of the Old South.”

But Superior Court Judge Leonard Goldstein found that Sims had failed to show the city had engaged in discriminatory practices.

The brief, three-page decision included only the ruling, not Goldstein’s legal reasoning. A complete opinion will be provided if requested by either party, according to the statement.

‘Not a Substitute’

“The court is mindful of the constitutional issues raised by plaintiffs in their complaint and has approached the weighing process with a heightened sensitivity intended to insure the recognition and protection of all constitutional rights,” Goldstein wrote. “However, sensitivity is not a substitute for proof and cannot overcome the lack of credible evidence.”

Goldstein found the plaintiffs simply failed to provide enough believable evidence to support their claims. He noted in passing that he found the question of whether the city’s housing actions served “the general welfare” to be “fairly debatable.”

“The court said the plaintiffs hadn’t proved their case,” said Kuperberg. “The land-use regulations that they challenged were reasonable given the other concerns that the city has to worry about, such as complying with environmental laws, endangered species laws, coastal access law, open space laws and noise mitigation laws.”

The challenge to Newport Beach housing policies was based on the reasoning of a landmark decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court, which concluded the town of Mount Laurel had developed zoning restrictions specifically with the intention of excluding racial minorities and lower-income residents.

Attorneys for the city argued, however, that no evidence of any intentional discrimination was presented in the Newport Beach case. The opposing lawyers largely tried to prove their case by use of census data depicting the city as wealthy and 95% white.

‘A Moving Target’

The city’s improvement in providing low- and moderate-income housing since the lawsuit was filed in 1980 left Sims wondering about part of Goldstein’s decision.

“The decision doesn’t address whether he (Goldstein) is looking at 1980 or 1985. We all recognized that this was a problem during the litigation. The judge referred to the lawsuit as a moving target.”

Sims insisted that the decision is not a judicial determination that there is no housing problem.

“He may be saying that the courts can’t second-guess what the Legislature has done,” Sims said. “The problem very clearly does exist throughout Orange County. We’re still at a crisis level for low-income people throughout the county.”

Not Shouldering Its Share

The primary named plaintiff in the lawsuit is Olive Davis, a resident of a Santa Ana mobile home park. She and other low-income plaintiffs had said that Newport Beach was not shouldering its share of the region’s responsibility to provide affordable housing.

With legal fees at $1.2 million, the case has been “the most expensive the city’s ever been involved with,” said Wynn, who was on the witness stand for three weeks.

Goldstein’s decision was “unequivocal and clear,” Wynn said.