Yonkers Council Complies With Housing Bias Order
The City Council, in an extraordinary session convened just three minutes before $1-million-a-day fines were scheduled to begin, voted early today to accept the desegregation of its housing.
The emotional vote ended five weeks of defiance of a federal judge’s contempt-of-court order that had made the fourth-largest city in New York a national symbol of civil rights resistance.
Faced with the prospect of paying such huge fines and losing one-quarter of the city’s municipal work force over the weekend, in a desperate attempt to stave off eventual bankruptcy, two defiant councilmen changed their minds.
“This is not a very pleasant time for anyone serving in government in the City of Yonkers,” said Councilman Nicholas V. Longo, who with Councilman Peter A. Chema indicated that they would finally go along with integrated housing.
“Hang tough,” a spectator in the packed council chamber shouted. Longo cited the pressure of layoffs and fines. “Because of the fines, because of the layoffs it would seem we have no alternative,” he said.
“You sold us out; we’ll remember you, Nicky,” another spectator shouted.
“It is a hard decision,” Chema said. . . . “Believe me, I fought the fight. I am caught between a rock and a hard place.
” . . . It’s time the city puts behind us the fines, the fighting and the turmoil.”
Even though the hour was late, anti-housing advocates gathered in the street outside City Hall, shouting: “No! No!”
The final vote was 5 to 2 to integrate Yonkers.
Longo and Chema said the housing plan would contain some significant changes, including supervision by nonprofit corporations and some local clergymen over some of the low-income buildings. Changes in the housing agreement still have to be approved by U.S. District Judge Leonard B. Sand, the Justice Department and other principals in the case, but Yonkers officials said the judge had indicated that the city would not have to pay any further fines, including the $1 million it was set to pay today.
Minutes after the vote was taken, New York state’s Secretary of State Gail S. Shaffer, chairman of the Emergency Financial Control Board for Yonkers, suspended layoffs.
“This morning, the healing process begins,” Shaffer said. “However, the path to social harmony must go beyond a mere grudging compliance with the law. Yonkers can emerge from this crisis as a stronger community, drawing strength from its diversity.”
After the vote was taken and while angry constituents shouted their displeasure in the hallway outside the fourth-floor council chambers, Longo stood quietly, assessing his decision.
“I can live with my conscience. I was displeased with what was happening to the city,” he said. “The city was slowly evaporating; first hundreds and then thousands of employees would be out of work.”
Earlier, Longo and Chema, two of the four councilmen who had been defying Sand’s order, had indicated that they might change their votes if the delicate negotiations to bring about housing desegregation were successful.
The councilmen faced intense pressure from constituents being laid off the city’s payroll because of the court-imposed fines, which could have bankrupted Yonkers.
Even as the City Council met to authorize funds to pay $819,000 in contempt-of-court penalties Friday, the Yonkers public library system was shut, forcing 202 employees out of work. Other municipal workers also were to be laid off over the weekend, as garbage collections have been drastically curtailed.
“We are out of work. This is a disgrace,” said Martha Darcy, a librarian for three years. “I am not a legal scholar, but it seems to me a decision has been made (by the court) and that’s the law, and the city of Yonkers is in contempt of it.”
Outside Council Chamber
Darcy stood at the head of the stairs outside the City Council chamber where earlier Longo and Chema said they might reconsider their votes.
“The pressure builds when 430 people are going out (of work),” said Longo. “I know half the people going out and their families. It’s no longer an abstract bankruptcy for the city. It’s gotten more personal. I’m concerned about the employees.”
“We’re hopeful. We are not at a stalemate by any means,” added Chema. “I am hopeful we can work out something in the very near future.”
Chema and Longo said one possibility that was considered was the creation of some sort of insurance fund to guarantee the value of privately held property near any new public housing built in Yonkers. There were indications that the sites for some low income housing also could be on the negotiating table.
All four members of the defiant council majority that has balked at desegregation said they had been bombarded by phone calls in the last 24 hours, as layoffs began and the fines approached the $1-million-a-day level, starting at midnight Friday.
“I got 70 phone calls,” Chema said. “Some people say hang tough. Other people say change your vote. I’ll tell you one thing: Everybody has an opinion in Yonkers.”
Negotiations took place in person and by telephone with the Justice Department and the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. Judge Sand, who found the city had willfully segregated itself, was kept apprised of the discussions. On Aug. 2, Sand held Yonkers and the four councilmen in contempt of court for resisting desegregation.
‘More Progress’
Five weeks later, there are signs the stalemate may be broken. Longo said the very fact that plaintiffs and defendants were negotiating in the desegregation case was “more progress than the last eight years.
“No one wants the agony to continue,” the councilman said. “The agony is on all sides”
“We have made a great deal of progress,” Longo added, assessing the private talks. “Certainly the layoffs hang heavily on each and every council member.”
But Councilmen Edward J. Fagan Jr. and Henry Spallone, who also voted against the plan to build 200 units of low-income housing and 800 units of middle-income housing in white neighborhoods, pledged that they would stand fast. Spallone was furious when he learned two of his colleagues were considering changing their votes.
“There will be a legal war and a war in this council,” he pledged. “I’m outraged.”
Mayor Nicholas C. Wasicsko, who called the council together to authorize money for the fine, said he hoped it would be the last Yonkers would have to turn over to the court.
Sand had imposed fines designed to double every day, and while the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the fines on appeal, the justices placed a $1-million limit to the daily payments.
