‘Forgotten’ Point in Housing Suit

The disabled Korean War veteran who has filed a $10-million lawsuit alleging discrimination by the City of Beverly Hills and those associated with its senior housing facility on Crescent Drive (Times, Nov. 26), seems to have forgotten that he, and all other veterans, like myself, have preferences that involve federal funds.

If that is allowed--and it has been ever since we decided to give veterans preferences as a reward for their war service--it seems to me that the City of Beverly Hills has a right to do what it did.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development sets rules and regulations for all federally subsidized housing. Income eligibility is conditioned on the median income of the residents of the city receiving funds. They also set rules as to the number of units in a housing project for efficiency apartments, one-bedroom and the handicapped. The latter have to be larger. And all common areas (must be) built to provide access to and use by the handicapped.

As I serve on two senior housing committees, one locally and another nationally, I am aware of how conscientious the nonprofit organizations involved are with regard to honoring the non-discriminatory policy demanded for such subsidized public housing as the City of Beverly Hills has built.

One also has to wonder, because federal funds are involved in many city projects, (if) that gives a person in a distant city the right to demand equal opportunity to share in the services of another city and make it contingent to one moving? Would the suit have been filed if Beverly Hills wasn’t as contiguous to Los Angeles and Santa Monica where the plaintiff already enjoys a federal subsidized apartment?

HYMAN H. HAVES

Pacific Palisades