A homeowners association in North Texas is being sued by many of its Black residents, who the HOA moved to boot from the community under the guise of addressing crime.
According to The Dallas Morning News, the federal lawsuit against the small Denton County HOA was filed this spring in the Eastern District of Texas, where Black Providence Villiage residents say they have feared for their safety and that of their families ever since the association tried to remove residents who receive government assistance to pay rent, nearly all of whom were Black. Of course, the property management company, FirstService Residential, said in a written statement Tuesday that it “denies the allegations and remains committed to operating with fairness, integrity, and compliance with the law,” and it has denied the allegations of racial discrimination, but the communities Facebook pages reportedly tell a different story. Also, the residents aren’t the only ones to file a discrimination suit against the HOA.
From the Morning News:
Posts called Black residents animals and trash. Some threatened physical violence. Once, a post showed a photo of a Black man with a rope around his neck. A caption read, “This one is not coming back tomorrow.” White supremacists passed out flyers with messages such as “Blacks bring crime and violence.”
Seven residents say they suffered emotional distress and additional financial troubles. Some were forced to move. Others stayed in the neighborhood and have endured ongoing harassment, they say. The McKinney Housing Authority filed a federal suit in May, also accusing the association of discrimination. Both lawsuits are seeking an unspecified amount in damages from Providence Village and its management company, FirstService Residential.
“It’s terrifying when your neighborhood decides they are going to force you out of your home,” said Laura Beshara, a Dallas attorney representing the residents. “That’s what happened here.”
It’s worth noting that Providence Village, which is about an hour north of Dallas, has grown more racially diverse over the years. The Morning News reported that the city, which has around 9,000 residents, has seen white homeownership drop from 92% in 2018 to 77% in 2022. It’s unclear if the area has actually seen a rise in crime in that time period, but, let’s be real — that ain’t what the push to get rid of poor Black people is really about.
More from the Morning News:
Strife began in 2021 when two teenagers, one Black and one white, got into a fight, according to federal court documents. Some residents blamed housing voucher recipients for what they saw as an increase in crime.
At the time of the fight, about 4% of households in the village paid rent with federal housing vouchers. Of those, more than 90% were Black. Recipients of federal housing vouchers typically pay 30% of their income toward housing.
Over the next several months, some residents drafted an amendment to ban residents who pay rent with government subsidies and fine landlords $300 a week until those renters are gone. The association organized a committee of two dozen homeowners who went door to door to persuade others to vote for the amendment, and organizers inundated homeowners with daily automated email reminders to vote.
At the same time, residents took to social media to complain about voucher recipients. “Hide Your kids cause section 8 is on the loose!!!” one post said. Another said, “Back in the day, when a community didn’t like someone, they banded together to make said persons life a living hell to the point they left.” One resident threatened, “they might just leave in a coroner’s wagon!!”
It’s an old practice of racial aggression that goes back decades, with white suburbanites protesting the expansion of public transportation to their neighborhoods to “keep the rif-raff out,” to white neighbors banding together to intimidate the Black folks they want gone. And if they can’t get rid of the so-called undesirables legally, they get what they want through threats of violence.
Unfortunately, on May 22, the HOA was able to get most of what it wanted done the legal way, passing the anti-voucher amendment, which threatened to displace about 600 residents, roughly 93% of whom were Black. At least 19 of those households left on their own out of fear of ending up homeless after being evicted, and out of fear for their safety.
The HOA’s new rule drew massive protests, with residents and landlords filing 53 complaints with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (under President Joe Biden — I’ll get to why that’s important in a sec). So, the association said it would ditch its racist and classist plan and comply with the Texas legislature, which, in 2023, passed a law prohibiting HOAs from discriminating against tenants based on their method of payment. But federal officials claimed the HOA didn’t comply with the law, and, instead, it instituted a new rule limiting owners to one rental property apiece. This rule generally had the same racist and classist outcome because most voucher recipients in the community rented from a few large landlords.
As a result of the lengths the HOA has gone to in an effort to re-segregate its neighborhood, the HUD, under Biden, charged the HOA with discrimination following a years-long investigation. Predictably, though, the HUD under President Donald Trump referred the case to the Justice Department, withdrew the case with no explanation.
This is as good a time as any to remind folks that, in March, Trump’s HUD upended two investigations into racist housing discrimination in — you guessed it — Texas.
Then, in April, Trump—who, along with his father, was sued by the Justice Department in 1973 over racist housing discrimination—signed an executive order requiring federal agencies, including the HUD, to stop using “disparate impact” data to identify discriminatory policies and practices that disproportionately harm certain groups. In other words, Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using data that indicates racial discrimination to identify racial discrimination.
It’s almost as if the racism is the point.
Apparently, Providence Villiage is simply trying to make America great again.
SEE ALSO:
Texas House Approves Legislation That May Establish A Private School Voucher Program
Trump’s HUD Is Upending 2 Investigations Regarding Racist Housing Discrimination In Texas
Texas Homeowners Association Sued Over Alleged Housing Discrimination After Trying To Ban Black Residents On Government Assistance
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