(Update, Aug. 5, 2016) Housing discrimination complaints, filed against the city of Richmond with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on behalf of the largely Hispanic residents of two South Side mobile home parks, have been settled. The city is required to pay an additional $30,000 in damages, conduct community outreach, assist residents with payment of home repairs, hire a "fair housing compliance officer," and establish a nondiscrimination policy.
A federal lawsuit, alleging unlawful and discriminatory code enforcement on the part of the city, was settled in May. For more details on this case, read the original column and updates below. — Richmond magazine staff
(Update, Oct. 8, 2015) Lawyers representing residents of two South Side mobile home parks targeted for top-to-bottom code enforcement inspections are asking a federal judge to issue a preliminary injunction against the city. The order would prevent code enforcement personnel from further inspections, condemnations, and, in fact, even visiting or touring the parks until the ongoing legal dispute is resolved.
The only exceptions would be in cases where code enforcement inspectors have obtained an inspection warrant for a specific home or upon the request of a resident, according to the request filed this afternoon in U.S. District Court.
The city has 11 days to respond, says attorney Phil Storey of the Legal Aid Justice Center, which is representing the 32 residents along with the Washington law firm of Crowell & Moring. For more details on this case, read the original column below. —Tina Griego
(Update, Sept. 17, 2015) The city of Richmond has asked a federal court to dismiss the lawsuit brought against it by 32 mobile home residents who argue that its code enforcement campaign selectively targeted poor, predominantly Latino communities, violating their civil rights.
The city, in a response filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, says the residents’ lawsuit paints “an inflammatory and inaccurate picture of the city,” and “imputes the worst possible motives to action meant to protect citizens from fire and other very real safety risks.”
“A lack of cultural sensitivity and a possible language barrier do not constitute intentional discrimination,” the response says, emphasizing repeatedly that residents have failed to prove the city violated their rights under the Civil Rights Act or the Fair Housing Act.
The residents, the filing goes on to say, bypassed available and applicable regulatory and state judicial channels of due process by asking for federal court intervention.
Should the court agree to hear their case, the city’s response says, it would represent an “extraordinary judicial intrusion,” into not just Richmond’s, but every municipality within the court’s jurisdiction to enforce the state’s Uniform Building Code.
The 32 residents, all but one of whom are Latino, all current or former residents of Rudd’s Trailer Park and/or Mobile Towne, filed suit against the city on Aug. 18. —Tina Griego
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Rudd's Trailer Park, just off Jefferson Davis Highway, is among the largest of Richmond's nine mobile home communities. After the city enforced a code and condemned the trailers, its residents now face eviction. (Photo by Tina Griego)
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(Original column)
Richmond, like most cities, is excellent at tucking away its poor, so chances are you’ve never seen Rudd’s Trailer Park. If you had, you’d likely say to yourself, “I had no idea people were living like this in this city.”
At least, that’s what I said to myself. The first time I visited was in 2013, just before Christmas. The community was hosting its annual Las Posadas, a reenactment of the biblical story of Joseph and Mary going door-to-door seeking a place to stay. The candlelit procession wound through the decrepit park, stopping before barely-held-together mobile homes, where residents gathered to ask, in song, for shelter.
During the day, children chased hens along rutted roads and played soccer on a small patch of ground near a corner of the lot, which every so often becomes a local dump, heaped with old mattresses and tires just off Jefferson Davis Highway.
Rudd’s is among the largest of the city’s nine trailer parks. At one time, not too long ago, it held 100 trailers. Now, there are about 60 tenants, says the owner. If the place looked impoverished and rundown before, now it looks as though a hurricane ripped through it. The park is dotted with empty trailers stripped of their aluminum siding, of anything that can be sold for scrap. The windows, if there are windows left, bear faded orange stickers reading, “Condemned. No trespassing.”
This is the aftermath of a comprehensive city code enforcement action that led to the federal lawsuit filed last week by a group of 32 mobile home park residents. Some live at Rudd’s; most of the rest live at Mobile Towne on Old Midlothian Turnpike.
The 32, all but one of whom are Latino, accuse the city of targeted and discriminatory code enforcement, which has resulted in the displacement of their neighbors and relatives and has left those who remain afraid they will lose their homes.
While Latinos make up just 7 percent of the city’s population, they represent 70 percent of mobile home park residents. About 75 percent of the residents of Rudd’s are immigrants from Mexico and Central America. At Mobile Towne, about 90 percent are from those regions. Many speak Spanish or Mixteco, an indigenous language. A few speak English. Some are citizens. Some are not, but are legal residents or have permission to work and study here. Some are here illegally, with no realistic hope under current law of ever becoming legal residents. It’s not uncommon to find families here in which every member occupies a different spot on the legal spectrum.
The families, and most are families, started settling at Rudd’s over the last decade. It’s right off the highway, but with all the trees and grassy patches, it has something of a country feel to it. They paid a few thousand dollars for the old trailers from previous owners who may or may not have held the titles. They pay the park owner $430 a month rent for space. They built sturdy front porches and attached them to their trailers. They put in new doors and sometimes windows. They brought in space heaters when it got cold. They ripped out ancient linoleum and replaced it with composite wood flooring and painted the walls in vibrant hues.
Last year, the city launched a long-overdue comprehensive inspection of its nine mobile parks. It started with Rudd’s. No, inspectors said to the hazardous space heaters in lieu of central heating. Absolutely not, they said to the added rooms, the walls fortified with drywall, the porches latched to the frames of questionably sound 40-year-old trailers. Inspectors issued hundreds of violation notices to residents and the park owner. A few places were condemned on the spot. The remaining condemnations, nearly 20 in all, followed after families who said they couldn’t afford the repairs moved out. Conditions were bad at the park. No one disputes that.
But the lawsuit paints a picture of city inspectors who kept issuing violation notices in English to people who only speak Spanish, inspectors who provided translation services in a haphazard manner that often neglected to mention the right to appeal, who threatened condemnation for repairs that were not immediate health-and-safety issues and that placed tremendous financial burdens on people they knew had no money. It depicts a city department detached from the ripple effects it knew its actions would cause and the collateral damage it would inflict.
The suit, brought on residents’ behalf by the Legal Aid Justice Center in Richmond and the Washington, D.C., law firm of Crowell & Moring, charges the city violated both the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act. It calls for the city to stop the inspections and to take steps to ensure its future actions in mobile home parks do not violate the law. It also asks for compensatory and punitive damages.
“This lawsuit never had to happen,” says Legal Aid Justice Center attorney Phil Storey. “The city chose to create this crisis. They created a timeline without providing any services to alleviate the fallout, without planning in advance to provide resources and services for rehab or relocation. This is very much the city’s self-inflicted wound.”
The city doesn’t comment on lawsuits against it, but earlier this year, a code enforcement division supervisor told me that his department never intended to force people out, just keep them safe.
The city has until early September to respond. Whatever that response, the suit raises larger questions about how it integrates its growing immigrant community, especially one isolated by language or legal status or both.
I went by Rudd’s Thursday. The owner says he’s still trying to sell the place. The residents are certain the city will drive everyone out before that happens.
An African-American man named Thomas was ripping apart the trailer his father bought for $1,200 in 2011. Thomas was living there with his dad when city inspectors condemned the property last summer. They’re living in an apartment now.
“Might as well tear it down instead of giving the money away,” Thomas says. “I figure I might get $600, $700 for the aluminum and the frame.”
I run into a Honduran woman I met last year. Gisela Munguia lives in her trailer with her Salvadoran husband and their two U.S.-born sons. Their home sits next to two gutted trailers amid an air of desolation.
“You’re still here?” I ask, surprised. She smiles and shrugs. “Where would we go? We’re waiting to see what happens.” She watches a boy meander down the center of the road past gutted trailers. “Most people have left,” she says. “We had a community here and now . . .”
She shrugs again, wishes me a good day and turns away.
