The settlement of a housing-discrimination lawsuit filed by a group of mostly Hispanic residents against the Village of Addison was both assailed and applauded last week in a hearing before U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo.
The judge said he will decide whether he agrees with the terms of the settlement after considering comments made during the hearing.
The village agreed in August to pay $1.8 million to about 170 families and an additional $2.5 million in attorneys’ fees as part of an out-of-court settlement of a 1995 lawsuit.
The plaintiffs said that the village sought to use its redevelopment plan, financed through tax-increment financing, to remove Hispanics by tearing down the apartment buildings in which they lived.
The village also agreed to seven years of fair-housing monitoring, and to educate its trustees and employees to follow the order.
At the hearing in the Alta Villa Banquet Hall in Addison, testimony focused as much on the events surrounding the settlement as on the settlement itself.
Edith Perez, who had lived in Addison for eight years, said she bought a building in the TIF area in 1994, only to find out a month later that the village had decided to tear it down.
“We worked very hard to buy this building for the future of our children,” she said, and she complained that the village failed to warn her of its plans to raze the structure.
Gary Grisko, another resident, said the settlement was not warranted because the area received a disproportionate amount of funding from the village for street paving and beautification and still had problems.
He said the money used in the settlement could have been put to better purposes, such as cultural sensitivity.
Several people criticized the $2.5 million designated for lawyers.
But Rita Gonzalez, director of Hispanics United of DuPage County, was effusive in her support of the agreement.
“We are extremely grateful of your decision,” she told Castillo. “We would definitely gain far more for our community with this settlement than by going to court, even if we win.”
About 75 people were in the audience, and more than one-third of them were prepared to speak.
The case arose three years ago when village officials announced plans to improve two areas they considered blighted. They said they would use tax-increment financing to lure developers to the areas to build new, less-dense housing.
Eventually, 44 families in the Green Oaks Court and Michael Lane areas were displaced as the village began to buy the buildings and tear them down.
In 1994, three organizations–the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, Hispanics United of DuPage County and the Hispanic Council of Bensenville–and 29 individuals filed a lawsuit claiming that the redevelopment plan was designed to get the Hispanic residents out of town. The following year, the U.S. Justice Department joined the case against the village.
About 6,000 of Addison’s 32,000 residents are Hispanic.
The debate caused frictioyn between village officials and residents living in the brick buildings, built in the 1950s and 1960s.
Residents of Michael Lane and Green Oaks said the neighborhoods are clean, safe and affordable.
Village officials and some neighbors said the rundown condition of the two apartment areas lowers the value of surrounding homes.
They noted that the law firm of Kane, McKenna and Associates, hired by the village in 1994 before the TIF districts were formed, had found that the apartments were overcrowded and had numerous building code violations. The buildings also had high tenant turnover and lacked parking and open space, village officials said.
