City loses again in group home lawsuit
A federal judge has ordered Springfield to fix violations of the Fair Housing Act related to group homes for the disabled.
U.S. District Judge Richard Mills in his March 2 ruling also decided that the city might have to pay fines and damages for illegally denying a permit for developmentally disabled men to live in a home on Noble Avenue.
Individual Advocacy Group, a nonprofit organization that operates the home, and a relative of a resident sued in 2016, two days after the city council voted 8-2 to deny a permit to allow the three disabled residents to live in the home two years after a lease was signed. The U.S. Department of Justice filed its own lawsuit in 2017, with the two suits eventually being combined into a single action.
The city has been losing in court since aldermen denied a permit. In 2018, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction issued by a lower court that prevented residents from being evicted. After the appellate court ruling, the city acknowledged that its zoning ordinance, under federal statute, discriminates against the disabled, but hasn’t yet changed the law that requires a conditional use permit for a group home within 600 feet of another. The city never has granted a permit allowing a group home for the disabled within 600 feet of another such home, according to court records.
The Noble Avenue home was 160 feet from a group home operated by Sparc when residents moved in, but no enforcement action was taken until two years later, when someone filed an anonymous complaint. IAG says it wasn’t aware of the Sparc home, and the city keeps no lists that could have been checked. During the 2016 council meeting that resulted in permit denial, police chief Kenny Winslow testified that there had been no trouble with residents that required police attention.
Prior to the 2018 appellate court ruling, the city had defended its zoning code, saying that it could enforce 600-foot setback rules for group homes for the disabled with five or fewer residents and require permits. However, the appellate court noted that there no such setback clauses or permit requirements for homes with five or fewer non-disabled residents. The city then conceded that its zoning code was discriminatory. Two years later, no fix has been made. In his decision, Mills gave the city 90 days to submit a remediation plan to correct violations of the Fair Housing Act in its zoning laws.
The city also could end up paying fines and damages under Mills’ order.
IAG has claimed that the city’s zoning ordinance has cost the organization money, with IAG founder and chief executive officer Charlene Bennett testifying that she’s spent 10% of her time on the Springfield lawsuit. The city’s zoning code, as well as gossip and meanness on the part of neighbors and city officials, also has prevented the organization from opening group homes in Springfield, IAG says, and so it has lost economic opportunities. In a deposition given last year, Bennett testified that IAG operates six group homes in Springfield, each with two residents. Four would be ideal from a business standpoint, she said, but she’s worried about the city. “I’m concerned that I have to go to the zoning board to get permission and I’m afraid we’d be retaliated against,” Bennett testified.
Besides giving the Department of Justice clearance to seek a fine, the city, Mills ruled, might have to compensate group home residents for emotional distress. In her 2019 deposition, Bennett testified that residents suffered after the city planted a sign in the front yard of the home, notifying the public of upcoming hearings for a conditional use permit. Neighbors submitted a petition to the zoning commission asking that a permit be denied.
“They believed they were being looked at, that people across the street were staring at them,” Bennett testified. “They believed that… there was a red truck driving back and forth, and so they believed that there was attention to the persons who lived in that home, and they were very concerned.”
Neighbors in 2016 also signed petitions seeking permit denial for another IAG group home on Pinehurst Drive, which shut down after the city council denied a permit three months before refusing a permit for the Noble Avenue home. Bennett testified that a zoning department employee at some point appeared at the Pinehurst home, prompting a phone call from an employee assigned to the home, who told her that the city worker had said residents needed to leave in front of a parent of a resident.
“She was the director, saying some zoning man showed up, very, very mean and disrespectful, saying to her and this parent ‘You can’t be here,’” Bennett testified. “The mother wanted to punch him in the face. I do remember that. Fortunately, she didn’t, of course.”
Contact Bruce Rushton at [email protected].
