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Judge declares 'decent end' to Sanders case

After nearly 17 years of litigation, including more than 10 years overseeing a complicated settlement in a housing discrimination lawsuit, a federal judge yesterday ended his oversight of the landmark case designed to desegregate Allegheny County's public housing and provide economic development to seven distressed communities. "Congratulations to all of you," Senior U.S. District Judge Gustave Diamond told spectators in his crowded eighth-floor courtroom in the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse. "It's been a long time. It's come to a decent end." Diamond has handled the lawsuit, called the Sanders case after lead plaintiff Cheryl Sanders, since it was filed in May 1988. The lawsuit was settled in December 1994 with a sweeping consent decree that required the county to reserve about $4.2 million a year for seven years for community development projects, to buy or build 130 new public housing units and to integrate the county's family public housing developments. The consent decree was supposed to end after seven years, but delays in funding and other issues caused the case to drag on for three more years. Though Diamond yesterday formally ended the consent decree in an agreement OK'd by all the parties involved, the county's Department of Economic Development will continue to oversee about $15 million in federal funds that will pay for a variety of projects in several low-income communities over the next two years. Nearly $31 million was reserved since 1994 for projects in Braddock, Clairton, Duquesne, Homestead, McKees Rocks, Rankin and Wilkinsburg. The major goal of the lawsuit and settlement was to desegregate the county's public housing and to a lesser extent, desegregate the county's overall housing stock. There is disagreement about whether that goal was accomplished. [more]