Stuart Gerson, a Member of the Firm in the Litigation and Health Care and Life Sciences practices, in the Washington, DC, and New York offices, was quoted in an article titled "Temperature Rises on HUD settlement."
Following is an excerpt:
The (HUD) settlement is a long-term effort to remedy failures in the county to provide fair and affordable homes in communities throughout Westchester County. Early in 2009, Federal Court Judge Cote granted the Anti-Discrimination Center a motion for judgment against Westchester. She ruled that Westchester had "utterly failed" to meet its fair housing obligations from 2000 through 2006, and she named James Johnson as the settlement's monitor.
The housing settlement agreement was approved in September of 2009 and cost the county about $8.4 million in penalties and more than $50 million to construct fair housing. The alternative to the settlement would have been fighting the issue of alleged discrimination by the county in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
If the case were fought and lost, the penalties could have cost the county taxpayers an estimated $180 million or more, according to Stuart Gerson.
