Charges of Bias Prompt Call for U.S. Probe at King’s Villages : Housing: Tenants say the manager evicts or harasses them if they exercise their civil rights.
Reports of evictions and harassment of tenants at the King’s Villages housing project in Northwest Pasadena have prompted the city Board of Directors to call for an investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office.
The board wants federal authorities to prosecute Thomas Pottmeyer, manager of the privately owned low-income housing project, if, as the King’s Villages Tenants Union Organization maintains, he has violated the civil rights of his tenants, most of whom are black.
“This Pottmeyer is writing a new chapter in discrimination,” City Director William Paparian said Tuesday. “He’s not discriminating because of their race; he’s discriminating because they’re exercising their rights as American citizens.”
Pottmeyer has singled out for evictions outspoken tenants or those active in the tenants organization, tenant union members told the board Tuesday. Such actions appear to violate constitutional rights of assembly and petition, Paparian said.
Pottmeyer denied that he has evicted activists. “I haven’t violated anyone’s civil rights,” he said Wednesday. “No one has brought a grievance to me that I haven’t listened to.”
The board Tuesday voted unanimously to request the federal investigation. It also directed the city attorney to determine whether Pottmeyer’s business partner and housing project co-owner, Goldrich, Kest & Associates, can be sued by the city for breach of contract and for money damages. Goldrich and Kest bought the project from the city in 1982 under a sale agreement prohibiting discrimination.
In addition, the board voted to ask federal Housing and Urban Development officials to terminate Pottmeyer’s management contract if he has violated federal rules for operating low-income housing projects.
“I have talked with Mr. Pottmeyer, and hard-nosed is a polite word,” City Director William Thomson said. “The only thing he is going to respond to is strength and force.”
Since January, when tenants complained of conditions at the complex and demanded action from the board, city officials have been scrutinizing the 272-unit housing project along Fair Oaks Avenue. A report on evictions over the past three years at the project will be presented to the board in two weeks, said Gordon Anderson, acting director of the Pasadena Employment Development and Community Services.
City officials also have been investigating whether the city has the legal ability to force a management change.
But City Manager Philip Hawkey said Tuesday that Pottmeyer’s response to city inquiries has been to “counterattack and express resentment.” Pottmeyer has declined to explain his policies, instead citing his rights as owner of a privately held housing project, Hawkey said.
Pottmeyer said city officials seem determined to draw him into a conflict and denied that he has been uncooperative with them or unsympathetic to his tenants.
“I run the complex like I run any apartment complex anywhere,” Pottmeyer said. “I do not discriminate.”
The 26-acre development opened in 1969 as a HUD project but reverted to city hands when the developers went bankrupt in 1982. The city quickly sold it to Goldrich and Kest, a Culver City-based company with 10,000 HUD projects in California. The company accepts low-income tenants with federal rent subsidies under the Section 8 program.
In 1988, Pottmeyer was brought in as a managing partner with a 49% ownership. Since he began managing the complex, tenants have complained that they are spied upon, harassed, questioned about visits from those outside the complex and issued eviction notices when they stand up for their rights.
Tenants also complained about the death in January of Robert Earl Holloway, who was strangled after project security guards tried to detain him for trespassing. Despite requests by the tenants for prosecution of those involved, the district attorney and the state attorney general both declined to file charges.
Pottmeyer, who maintains that he is ridding the project of drug dealers, said the complainers are mainly former tenants.
However, Bernice McDaniels, 63, a 17-year resident at the complex, told the board Tuesday that Pottmeyer has been “picking on” her for nearly two years. He fired her from a grounds maintenance job at the complex and threatened to evict her after she circulated a petition on tenant rights, she said.
He also threatened to evict her because of an iron screen door she had installed at her apartment more than seven years ago, she said. McDaniels said 11 other tenants with iron screen doors have been similarly threatened.
In July, Pottmeyer entered her apartment unannounced and told her he was checking the management office key to the screen door, McDaniels said.
She said she was so angry that she took the key from Pottmeyer, then tossed it back. Two weeks later, she said, she received an eviction notice accusing her of assault.
Pottmeyer denied having entered her apartment and said he came no closer than five feet from her door.
“I did not trespass, period,” he said.
McDaniels said that she has since filed a lawsuit against Pottmeyer for trespassing and that he has refused to accept her rent payments for the past two months.
On Tuesday, the board watched a videotape made Sept. 4 of McDaniels attempting unsuccessfully to pay her rent at the housing project’s management office.
Tenant June Harper said Pottmeyer uses what she termed “scare tactics” against politically active tenants, refusing to accept their rent payments on the grounds that they are being evicted.
Grace Denton, public affairs officer for the U.S. Attorney’s office in downtown Los Angeles, said the Pasadena officials’ request for an investigation would be forwarded to the FBI.
Any decision to prosecute would then be made in Washington by the Justice Department, Denton said. The regional office would have only the responsibility of filing the charges and prosecuting.
