[nfbmi-talk] disabled vets not welcome in oakland twnship
joe harcz Comcast
joeharcz at comcast.net
Sun Dec 7 13:10:45 UTC 2014
Michael Harris and Michigan Paralyzed Veterans was the lead plaintiff in the Detroit Metro case and in several others. Our State President asked me for a veteran contact recently ... well here is one.
Joe
Disabled vets not welcome in posh suburb
By Brian Dickerson, Detroit Free Press Columnist 12:08 a.m. EST December 7, 2014
DFP Dickerson column.JPG
Oakland Township has room for plenty of 10,000-square-foot mansions. For housing designed to accommodate the elderly and disabled? Not so much.(Photo: Kimberly
P. Mitchell/Detroit Free Press)
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Everyone talks about America's debt to its disabled veterans, but one of Michigan's wealthiest communities is going the extra mile to make sure that debt
is honored in someone else's town.
Or at least that's the thrust of a lawsuit filed in federal court late last week — on the eve, probably not coincidentally, of Pearl Harbor Day — in which
a 68-year-old advocacy group for disabled military veterans alleges that Oakland Township is using its zoning laws to keep vets, elderly people and other
disabled residents from moving in.
Among those in the plaintiffs' corner: the township's retired supervisor, who asserts in a formal complaint to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development that her former employer's zoning and land-use rules violate the federal Fair Housing Act.
"Oakland Township engages in housing discrimination against the disabled, the elderly, and moderate- and lower-income persons," former Supervisor Joan Buser
asserted in a letter to HUD and the Department of Justice, which has notified the township's board of trustees that it's continuing to study Buser's allegation.
A legal battle
This is all bad news for the township's current trustees, five of whom won election in 2012 on the strength of their opposition to the assisted-living development
that is at the center of the paralyzed veterans' lawsuit.
"The township has no intention of barring disabled American veterans or the elderly from living here," Supervisor Terry Gonser said Friday when I called
him to discuss the lawsuit. "Any existing housing is open to whoever wants to move in."
And there, of course, is the rub: The typical Oakland Township residence is a sprawling single-family home situated on a lot of 2 acres or more. Homes boasting
more than 10,000 square feet are not unusual, and more than a quarter of the township's detached single-family homes were valued at more than half a million
dollars in the 2010 census (conducted near the nadir of the housing industry collapse).
Vast tracts of the township's 23,000 acres remain vacant, but none of that land is currently zoned to permit multi-family housing.
And that, the plaintiffs say, is the sort of higher-density housing needed to make the services that elderly and disabled people available at an affordable
cost.
Homing in
Developer Dominic Moceri, whose family has lived in Oakland Township for decades, has been seeking permission to build a multi-family housing project for
elderly and disabled residents since 2011 on a 42-acre site at the northwest corner of Adams and Dutton roads.
Buser and Mike Harris, a paraplegic Marine Corps veteran who heads the Paralyzed Veterans of America's Michigan chapter, became two of the project's most
enthusiastic supporters.
Harris' chapter represents about 500 paralyzed veterans, most of whom served in Iraq and Afghanistan. As recently as the Vietnam War, almost a third of
Americans wounded in combat died. In those two more recent conflicts, about 16 have survived for every one killed in action.
Harris says finding suitable housing is the No. 1 challenge confronting disabled veterans, and that Moceri's development would address a critical shortage.
Buser, who lived in Oakland Township for 37 years before retiring from her supervisor's post in 1999, now lives in Hilton Head, S.C., where she says she
struggles with limited mobility. The completion of Blossom Ridge would provide her with a means to spend the last years of her life near the family and
friends she left behind in the township.
Not in our backyard
The site is one of three areas identified in the township's 2005 master plan as suitable for specialized housing for seniors. In August 2012, after a consultant
retained by the township assured its board of trustees that Moceri's 248-unit development would serve elderly and disabled residents without spoiling their
community's rural character, trustees voted 4-3 to approve the necessary zoning.
But the project's victory was short-lived. Residents who attended public hearings on the proposal worried that the project would draw residents and workers
from outside the township, including Alzheimer's disease patients prone to indecent exposure, suicide and violence.
Some of the most vocal opponents successfully challenged the majority of trustees who had supported Blossom Ridge, and by 2013, a newly elected board had
effectively scuttled the project.
Moceri and his backers responded by filing formal complaints with HUD and the DOJ, which is continuing to investigate the allegations of discrimination,
and by initiating Friday's lawsuit.
This means war
When I asked the veterans group's Harris whether Moceri was exploiting public sympathy toward wounded veterans to vilify Oakland Township in what is fundamentally
a real estate dispute, Harris said that was the point.
"Usually, when you see an advance for the disability community, it's a response to wounded veterans coming home from a war," he said. The veterans group
has always attempted to leverage that into better conditions for everyone in that community, whether their disabilities arise from workplace injuries,
illness, or advancing age.
Late last week, I asked Gonser whether his affluent community had an affirmative obligation to provide for the needs of people like Harris and Buser.
"Well, that's the $64,000 question, and I'm no attorney," replied Gonser, who said he worked in management at General Motors and other corporations until
his retirement.
"As I look at the (federal) Fair Housing Act, it was supposed to preclude people who already owned property from discriminating," he said. "Somehow, it
has progressed to the point where some people want to apply it to housing that hasn't even been built yet."
Contact Brian Dickerson at 313-222-6584 or bdickerson at freepress.com.
Source:
http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/brian-dickerson/2014/12/07/disabled-veterans-discrimination-suit/19980009/
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