COURTS : Hearings Open on Alleged Bias at Housing Complex

African Americans were systematically denied rental apartments in King’s Villages, an attorney for the city of Pasadena alleged this week as the trial opened in the city’s lawsuit against the owner of the low-income housing complex.

A lawyer representing Thomas Pottmeyer, owner of the 313-unit housing complex in Northwest Pasadena, denied the allegation, saying Pottmeyer followed federal housing guidelines in renting the apartments.

The trial began Tuesday in a makeshift courtroom at the Pasadena Convention Center more than three years after the city filed the discrimination lawsuit against Pottmeyer in federal court. Referee Jack E. Goertzen, a retired judge, is hearing the case and will submit a report to U.S. District Judge A. Wallace Tashima, who will decide the lawsuit.

The city filed the discrimination lawsuit in 1991, alleging Pottmeyer discriminated against African Americans, evicting single black women from their apartments and purging the names of black people from rental waiting lists. The city claims that Pottmeyer preferred to rent to Latino couples, whom he perceived as more likely to pay their rent and less likely to engage in or condone illegal activity, such as drug dealing, that plagued the complex.

“He was going to get rid of the uppity, black single women, whom he perceived as a source of the problem,” said lawyer Dale L. Gronemeier, who gave his opening argument Tuesday on behalf of the city.

But Pottmeyer’s lawyer, Stephen C. Johnson, said in his opening argument that the city’s lawsuit was based “entirely on allegations, not facts.” He noted a federal review in 1992 turned up no wrongdoing in the complex, most of whose tenants receive federal housing subsidies.

“There is no evidence of discrimination,” Johnson said.