Families in Housing Suit Recall Pain of Bias

Carnella Bey, an African American fifth-grade teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, was shocked when the security chief at the Park Apartments in Lakewood warned her that if her son didn’t stop hanging around with one of his friends, her family would be evicted.

The reason? The son’s friend, a black teenager, was suspected of being a gang member--mostly on the basis of the clothes he wore.

“I really thought [the security chief] had seen too many TV images,” Bey recounted.

Other families she knew were being evicted from the same Lakewood apartment complex for much the same reason.

Sharing notes, the families decided something was wrong. Contending that they were victims of overt racism directed at their teenage children on the basis of pop culture stereotypes of black youth, they filed a housing discrimination lawsuit in 1993.

On Thursday the families received the first $40,000 in installments of what will be payments of at least $60,000 per family.

The suit was filed against the Village Property Management Inc., managers of the apartment complex; Paolo Pedrazzoli, the manager; Burns International Security Services; and others, including members of the condominium association who own the rental units.

In addition to assessing the monetary damages, a consent decree approved Wednesday requires the defendants to initiate sensitivity training for their employees and require them to learn anti-discrimination housing laws.

The court order also will require the defendants to maintain records of evictions, complaints and other actions and allow tenants access to their files.

Although they agreed to the settlement, the defendants denied the allegations. In the consent decree, they said they agreed to the settlement to avoid a lengthy and costly lawsuit. They refused comment Thursday.

The suit accused the management firm and its security guards of practicing racial discrimination and harassing young black males by adopting a policy of not allowing them to gather in groups, even though teenagers of other nationalities and races were allowed to congregate freely.

Bey’s son and his friend were good students and members of the football team at Artesia High School, Bey said.

“Gang members don’t play football,” she said. “Gang members don’t go to school every day. My son went to school every day.”

Another example of harassment mentioned in the suit involved the parents of a boy suffering from lupus. They took around-the-clock shifts so that one of them could always be with their son during an eight-month hospitalization.

They said they and other family members were in and out so much, at all hours of the day and night, that they were evicted after being accused of selling drugs.

The male teenagers bore the brunt of the accusations, their families said. “All the young black males in the facility were having the same or similar problems,” said John Graves, a youth counselor who, with members of other families, met with the news media Thursday in the Long Beach offices of the Fair Housing Foundation. The agency investigated the original complaints.

Graves said he thought the problem stemmed from “hip-hop” attire, such as baggy pants and shirts, that the teenagers were wearing.

“Unfortunately society has projected this image of members of the hip-hop culture as hard-core gangsters, murderers and drug dealers,” said Graves, who was forced to move and now lives in nearby Hawaiian Gardens.

“It got to the point where I was questioning my kids because, being a parent, I understand that kids get involved in things they shouldn’t be involved in.”

Under terms of the consent decree, a pool of $1.2 million in damages will be disbursed to victims of the discrimination--the original eight families and as many as 50 other apartment tenants who joined the legal action later. Lead attorney Bert Voorhees and his firm will receive $500,000 in fees.

While the money symbolized their victory, the families said there was no financial payoff big enough to compensate for the pain they went through.

Bey said her son Arthur and his friends wore baggy pants and shirts. “Because they looked like some of the gang members, [it was] just automatically assumed that they were,” she said. “They were not. I was really furious.

Voorhees said the tensions that developed over the harassment, evictions and other problems created deep wounds within the families.

“There is no question that it really damaged some family relationships,” Voorhees said.

“When building managers and owners are telling you there is a problem, who are you to believe? You start talking to other families and realize the accusations are false and the kids are being set up, but by then you have already said some pretty harsh things to your children.”

Martin Crump, now 20, was 15 when his family lived at the apartment complex and he began being followed by security guards. Shortly before his family was evicted on the basis of complaints against Crump that he said were never proven, the guards put him under “house arrest.”

“I had to drop out of summer school,” he recalled Thursday. “I just stayed inside.”

Crump, who hopes to begin college at Cal State Fullerton later this year, said he and his family had lived in the apartment complex for 14 years when they were evicted. He said he lost his friends and had to change schools.

Bey is the only parent still living there. She said things at the Park Apartments have improved over the last 4 1/2 years, but racial stereotyping is still a problem.

“You can still tell there are stereotypes in these folks’ heads that need to be removed,” Bey said.