Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 13, 1995 TAG: 9502140070
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Elitist, perhaps, but Irving Place is also home to 109 facilities that serve the city's addicts, homeless and other down and out.
When residents learned last April that a 28-unit home for the mentally ill homeless was moving in, they did something they had never done before: They got involved in local politics, forming a coalition to fight the home, distributing petitions, speaking out a public meetings.
Democracy in action?
Not according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
HUD began investigating members of the Irving Place Community Coalition for discriminating against people protected under the federal Fair Housing Act. It demanded all the group's correspondence, diaries, meeting notes and lists of contributors.
It turned out HUD was investigating community groups across the nation based on what many now agree was a disregard of free speech rights under the First Amendment.
It happened in Berkeley, Calif., where residents fought a homeless shelter. In Seattle, a community group was targeted when it tried to block a home for alcoholics and drug addicts. Residents in Hartford, Conn., Washington, D.C., and Richmond, Va., faced similar probes.
``We didn't feel we had done anything wrong, but we were very, very intimidated,'' said Joseph Deringer, who lived adjacent to the proposed shelter in Berkeley. ``The threat was we could be fined $100,000 and jailed if we didn't give them the information they wanted. It was chilling.''
The investigations terrified and baffled the residents, neophytes to the business of organized protest, but they galvanized political activists.
Soon, their outrage and the indignation of newspaper editorial writers forced HUD into retreat.
It's one thing to threaten or harass social service officials or the residents of a group home, critics noted; it always had been quite another to disagree with a plan and fight back by speaking out at public meetings or petitioning government officials.
HUD spokesman Michael Siegel acknowledges it was a mistake for the agency to investigate peaceful protesters. The agency halted the probes and quickly issued new guidelines for field workers when it realized they had gone too far, he said.
``Quite frankly, in light of the case in Berkeley, the need for such guidelines became necessary,'' Siegel said. ``And the guidelines are very, very clear so they don't chill speech under the First Amendment.''
``Chilling'' has become the watchword of the case.
Arlene Harrison, a member of the Irving Place coalition, saw the mighty federal government in all its intimidating power bearing down on her, and potential huge fines staring her in the face. ``It was like Big Brother coming to your door with a hammer.''
Harrison, who works with the mentally ill as a teacher and counselor, worried she would lose her job or that the Internal Revenue Service would announce an audit.
``The `thought police' would be a good way to describe HUD's behavior,'' said Roger Connor, executive director of the Washington-based American Alliance of Rights and Responsibilities, which works with community groups on neighborhood improvement and joined with the American Civil Liberties Union to denounce the agency.
Deringer and his wife, Alexandra White, agree.
They used many of the same tactics to protest as Harrison's group. Then, in November 1993, an official notice that HUD was investigating arrived in the mail.
The next 10 months were a tense waiting game, because HUD did not answer letters or phone calls, Deringer said. He and White never turned over any of the materials HUD demanded, because their attorney told them not to.
Then, on Sept. 2, HUD announced it would stop investigating people who were fighting housing proposals with peaceful protest.
Still, the repercussions linger for those who were investigated.
``I feel used, abused, jerked around,'' said Harrison.
In Berkeley, Deringer and White lost their fight to stop the hotel from being converted into a home - but they have become immersed in local politics.
Despite the change in policy, Deringer said HUD has never fully appreciated the anxiety provoked by a knock on the door from the federal government.
``My wife called the whole ordeal the never-ending nightmare,'' he said. ``She still does.''
by CNB