Pasco Ordinance Bars Services for Low-Income Community
from Washington ACLU
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit challenging a
City of Pasco zoning ordinance that prohibits community services that
serve low-income residents from the downtown area. The ACLU is
representing SeaMar Farmworker and Community Housing Development
Association, a nonprofit agency barred by the ordinance from
converting a vacant motel in Pasco into inexpensive housing for
farmworkers. The suit seeks a court order requiring the City to
process SeaMar's building permit for the housing project. The suit was
filed in Franklin County Superior Court.
"Pasco has discriminated against low-income people by adopting an
ordinance designed to prevent them from living in an area of the city.
The ordinance primarily affects Latino workers who have a right to
housing in the community," said Julya Hampton, Legal Program Director
for the ACLU.
SeaMar is a nonprofit provider of health care and social services,
primarily to the Latino community, which has formed a nonprofit
subsidiary to create farmworker housing in Pasco. In April 2000,
SeaMar purchased a vacant motel in Pasco, now known as the SeaMar
Motel, and made plans to convert it into farmworker housing. SeaMar is
buying another vacant motel called the Travel Inn that it will convert
in a similar fashion. In May 2000, the City of Pasco instituted a
moratorium on applications for any permits or licenses for community
service facilities located in downtown Pasco. The City amended its
zoning code in December 2001 and has refused to process SeaMar's
building permit application.
The amended zoning code creates a district in the central business
area from which most community services that serve the poor are
prohibited. The district includes the sites of the SeaMar projects,
and the ban includes "transient hotels or motels" such as the ones
SeaMar plans to build. The City's justification for eliminating these
community services is that they "make the central business area of the
City ... less desirable or attractive to the public ... "
The City's goal of eliminating social services that attract poor
people as clients violates the Constitution. In a similar case (City
of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, 1985), the US Supreme Court
found that a zoning ordinance that furthers no compelling government
interest other than community prejudices violates the Equal Protection
Clause of the 14th Amendment. That case involved a zoning ordinance
aimed at barring a group home for the mentally retarded. In
overturning the ordinance, the court noted that it "rests on a bare
desire to treat the retarded as outsiders, pariahs who do not belong
in the community."
The ACLU lawsuit also challenges the ordinance for being
unconstitutionally vague. The ordinance defines a transient hotel as
one whose clients "may rely" on "charitable assistance" for "support."
This could conceivably cover any hotel, since all are willing to rent
rooms to people who "may" rely on charitable assistance, so long as
they can cover their bill. "Charitable assistance" is also undefined
in the ordinance and could apply to people living on grants, gifts
from relatives, or money from such nonprofit organizations as
churches.
Michael Gendler, an attorney with the firm Gendler and Mann and chair
of the ACLU Legal Committee, is handling the case.
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