PASADENA : Project Owner Guilty of Discrimination, Court Told
A lawyer for the city of Pasadena alleged Tuesday that the white owner of a federally subsidized housing project discriminated when he bypassed black applicants for apartments in favor of Latinos.
Thomas Pottmeyer, who owns and operates King’s Villages, believed that “the way to make the project profitable was to get rid of African American women, whom he felt were uppity and out of control,” and move in Latino couples, lawyer Dale Gronemeier said.
The claim came during the opening day of the trial of a federal civil rights lawsuit the city filed in November, 1991, against Pottmeyer. He was cleared of accusations of racially biased practices by federal housing investigators in 1992. Pottmeyer, through his attorney, Stephen Johnson, denied the allegations and contended the city brought the complaint as a ploy to eventually purchase the property it sits on.
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