Racial Discrimination Charges Raised in East Texas Public Housing : Segregation: HUD’s Cisneros says days of separate housing for blacks and whites are over and points to integration in Vidor. But residents of 188 projects in state dispute his rosy conclusion.

It was a rainy wintry day, and Gwendolyn Davis had her oven on to cut the chill. The new heaters didn’t work, but the Beaumont Housing Authority had known about that for months.

“They don’t take care of us,” said Davis, a well-spoken woman in her 60s. “When you call in a work order, half the time maintenance is somewhere else. You don’t get the quick service you should, and you get nasty attitudes.”

Several residents of Grand Pine, a 94-unit apartment complex for low-income elderly people, have joined with nearly 40% of the tenants in Beaumont’s 10 public housing projects to demand that Carolyn Hudler, Housing Authority executive director, be fired.

The tenants charged “disrespectful” and “humiliating” treatment by authority personnel, and blistered Hudler for being “insensitive to our needs, concerns, safety and health.”

This is special code, understood by all. Davis and the vast majority of Beaumont’s tenants are black. Hudler, and the majority of her employees, are white. Black employees call the Housing Authority “the White House,” but not because of the building.

Beaumont, a rough-and-tumble oil town 90 miles east of Houston, is the hub of the biggest housing discrimination lawsuit in U.S. history, affecting 60,000 low-income people in 36 East Texas counties.

The suit covers 188 East Texas public housing projects, of which 98, or 52%, are racially segregated. For decades, federal and local housing officials have practiced informal apartheid here: one standard for whites; another standard for blacks.

The defendant is the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, and East Texas is the acid test for an agency charged in at least 12 U.S. cities with using federal dollars to prolong segregation and discrimination through its low-income housing programs.

HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros insists that those days are over. On Sept. 14, he traveled to Vidor, Tex., just north of Beaumont, and took over the local housing authority to integrate an all-white project. “This is a new day,” he proclaimed.

On Feb. 4, he followed up by filing separate desegregation plans for all 70 public housing authorities in the East Texas counties, deliberately putting HUD’s reputation on the line.

“I think there is no question that HUD has been part of the problem for a long time,” said Roberta Achtenberg, HUD’s assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity. “Secretary Cisneros is trying to reverse that pattern significantly and irretrievably.”

He is also trying to reverse it nationwide. “We have decided to tackle this one first,” Achtenberg added, with the hope that “progressive models” developed in East Texas “can be applied elsewhere.”

But many HUD-watchers are not so sure of the agency’s resolve. Vidor, notorious as a onetime Ku Klux Klan stronghold, was a welcome symbol of HUD’s good intentions, they note, but it was only one project among 188 in East Texas.

Critics are also disappointed that HUD has decided to support Hudler in Beaumont, even though the Houston district office made a preliminary assessment that she should be fired.

Finally, Dallas attorney Michael M. Daniel, who filed the suit nearly 15 years ago, is skeptical that HUD’s action will address the many forms of housing discrimination in the region. East Texas, he says, has “separate but unequal” housing for different races, local officials “steer” white and black tenants to segregated projects and send families to apartments that are too big or too small, but where people are the same color.

At Grand Pine, tenants have 28 outstanding requests for basic maintenance, painting, insulation, security guards and vent hoods for stoves. No one has a bathtub.

At Neches Park, hard by the Beaumont piers, mountains of wood chips waiting for export give off pungent fumes in the rain, leaving children with headaches and coughs. At Northridge Manor, some children recently were found to have high lead levels in their blood, and several units had faulty air conditioners and appliances.

“We need people in charge that more clearly understand the predicament here,” said Barbara Scott, president of the Northridge Manor Resident’s Council. “The point is that people from outside Beaumont are in charge of people inside Beaumont. At 5:30 (p.m.), they go home to their world and leave us to ourselves.”

Daniel has complained to HUD for years, and HUD has promised change. Cisneros’ and Achtenberg’s effort will be the fourth attempt to redress East Texas housing discrimination in the last decade. All previous tries failed.

“I’m absolutely convinced of Henry Cisneros’ and Roberta Achtenberg’s good will,” Daniel said. “But to believe they are about to turn around . . . agencies who have fought desegregation tooth-and-nail would be to ascribe to them superhuman powers.”

Festering conflicts like Beaumont’s have sapped HUD’s energy in East Texas and provoked disdain among housing advocates who question both HUD’s good will and motives. “These PHAs (public housing authorities) are thumbing their noses,” said Scott Newar, a Beaumont public-interest attorney helping Daniel in East Texas.

Newar is pressing HUD to take over Beaumont, as it did Vidor, “to send a message” to the 70 East Texas authorities. Instead, HUD appears to be using Vidor as its model for what can happen to housing authorities that don’t fall into line.

By the end of last month, Vidor’s earth-colored, one-story buildings housed 10 black tenants, with U.S. marshals and Vidor police ensuring their safety. Intimidation last year drove away the project’s first black residents, one of whom was subsequently murdered in what authorities called an unrelated shooting.

“From growing up in the Golden Triangle, you know about Vidor--that it’s all-white, prejudiced, a troubled city,” said Valeria Stredic Reed, 21, who moved into the project Jan. 13. “But it was a challenge, so I decided to do it.”