The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU) announced Monday that the state’s civil rights agency had opened an investigation into allegations that Riverside officials violated anti-discrimination laws by voting to reject a state grant for an affordable housing project.
“The city has a legal obligation to create fair housing and to make decisions about housing that are free from discrimination,” Kath Rogers, ACLU senior staff attorney, said in an interview with The Riverside Record. “This decision has hurt the community as a whole and we want to see the city reconsider this unlawful decision.”
Rogers said the California Civil Rights Department was scheduled to serve the city of Riverside with the complaint Monday. The agency, according to Rogers, is set to focus its investigation on the Riverside City Council’s January 13 decision to reject a $20.1 million state grant for an affordable housing project. If accepted, the funding would have been used to convert a motel on University Avenue into studio apartments for people transitioning out of homelessness.
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Last month, the nonprofit law firm filed a complaint alleging councilmembers Philip Falcone, Steven Robillard, Chuck Conder and Sean Mill made the decision to reject the grant based on “explicitly discriminatory remarks against the people who would stand to benefit” from the project.
Mill, in a phone call with The Record, rejected the characterization of his comments as discriminatory and said his critiques of the project were focused on his disagreement with the state’s Housing First model, which focuses on getting people sheltered before providing additional wraparound services.
Robillard and Conder did not immediately respond to The Record’s request for comment, and Falcone declined to comment.
Rogers said the department is set to investigate discrimination under California’s Disabled Person’s Act, the Fair Employment and Housing Act and the state’s anti-discrimination law. If the agency finds the ACLU’s allegations credible, she said, the department could take several different routes, like hold mediation hearings or file a lawsuit on behalf of the state or the complainant.
“Our hope is that [the California Civil Rights Department] take[s] some enforcement action based on what they think is appropriate,” Rogers said.
A public affairs official with the state’s civil rights agency, in a phone call with The Riverside Record, said the department was unable to comment on, or even confirm the existence of, investigations.
The city’s public information officer Phil Pitchford said the city would not provide comment.
Monday’s announcement followed a monthslong effort by local housing advocates to push the city council to reverse its decision, including a press conference by the ACLU and two other law firms to warn of potential litigation.
Robillard argued, in an op-ed published in the Raincross Gazette the same day as the press conference, that policy disagreements should not result in litigation in an effort to circumvent council decisions.
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