Correspondence from Tegeler to Rabin and Price Re: Additional Housing Documents

    ATTORNEY WORK PRODUCT /PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL 

TO: Yale Rabin, Ruth Price 

FROM: Phil Tegeler (f~ 

RE: Additional Housing Documents; Sheff v. O'Neill 
  

DATE: March 18, 1991 

Attached are descriptions of some interesting new (old) 
reports that Lisa recently found at the state library. 

These will be added to our master list of housing documents 
and are available in our files at CCLU. 

vce: Marianne Lado 

 



Philip Tegeler 

Lisa Galipo 

Additional Housing and Transportation Documents from 
State Library 

March 14, 1991 

l. CT Department of Transportation. A Transportation 
Improvement Program for the Hartford Area. (February, 1972). 

  

  

Significance: This report recommends 1) the 
implementation of a rail commuter service operating the 
17.5 mile Penn Central railroad track between Hartford. 
and Enfield; 2) establishing 3 bus-loop routings in 
order to allow maximum circulation and distribution in 
downtown Hartford and provide efficient service to the 
major employers in the city; 3) provision of improved 
bus service to other large employers in the Hartford 
area such as Pratt & Whitney Aircraft in East Hartford. 

  

2. Stokes, Charles. University Research Institute of 
Connecticut. Connecticut Public Housing Improvement Research 
Study. (March, 1971). 
  

Significance: This study was commissioned by the Department 
of Community Affairs and put the state on notice that: 
-- There is strong evidence that the public housing projects 
in Connecticut are becoming increasingly segregated. 
-- The end of the benign quota system for Hartford public 
housing has probably contributed directly to de facto 
segregation in the school systems. 

  

3. Connecticut Department of Community Affairs, Developing a 
Comprehensive State Housing Plan, (June 30, 1970) 

  

  

Significance: This report was commissioned by the Dept. of 
Housing and Urban Renewal and makes the following findings: 
1) Using statistics from a public opinion survey conducted 
by Allen and Coifax (“Urban Problems and Public Opinion in 
Four Connecticut Cities”) this report shows that despite 
minority citizens desire to live in suburbs, they are 

   



concentrated in the central city and surrounded by primarily 
white suburbs; 2) White disapproval of racial mixing in 
public housing projects shows that a need does exist for 
housing programs that account for and attempt to eliminate 
discrimination; 3) Inadequate transportation services impose 
a limit on residents’ earning capacities and improvement of 
housing; 4) Highways are the single most important 
determinant of the time, location, and density of population 
growth. Sewer and water lines are second in potential 
importance. Hence, plans for housing, public utilities, and 
transportation must be coordinated; 5) Urban renewal has 
failed to provide sufficient housing. Governmental bodies 
involved in renewal programs, demolished more housing units 
than they built; 6) Suburban exclusionary and fiscal zoning 
practices, whatever their motivation, are serious obstacles 
to the goals of freedom of housing choice and the 
facilitation of low-income and minority housing 
opportunities in the suburbs. 

4. Stockwell, Edward & Pitt, Thomas. UCONN. Residential 
Segregation in Metropolitan Connecticut. (January, 1969). 

  

  

Significance: In this report, the state is put on notice 
that: 1) as of 1960, blacks and Puerto Ricans were sharply 
segregated from the rest of the community in all 7 major 
metropolitan centers of the state; 2) the majority of 
persons who live in segregated neighborhoods do so because 
of discriminatory housing practices; 3) de facto segregation 
in education is compounded by the fact that the schools in 
many minority neighborhoods are often old, crowded, and in a 
poor state of repair, and all of these factors combine to 
ensure that youngsters in a segregated neighborhood receive 
a lower quality education than they would receive in a non- 
segregated environment. 

  

5. Connecticut Interregional Planning Program. A Report on 
Residential Structures and Households in Connecticut 1900- 
2000. (February, 1963). 

  

  

Significance: States that prior to 1950, the major impetus 
to public housing in the state came from the federal PHA 
program. During this period 94% of the construction by local 
housing authorities occurred in the 7 urban regions. With 
the inauguration of state involvement, urban regions still 
accounted for 82% of such housing built between 1950 and 
1361. As of the end of 1961, the state's plan for elderly 
public housing will result in public housing for the elderly 
being almost equally divided between urban and semi- 
urban/rural regions. The 7 urban regions accounted for 90% 

  

 



  

of the non-white population in the state and 92% of their 
housing in 1960. 

6. Henry, Thomas F., Commission on Civil Rights. ‘1961-1962 
Digest of Connecticut Administrative Reports to the 
Governor. 

  

  

  

Significance: survey of occupancy patterns in public 
housing projects shows that racial concentration has 
been increasing rapidly in low rent housing projects 
and will lead to "de facto” segregation not only in the 
projects but also in schools unless this trend can be 
checked. 

  

7. Report of the Temporary State Commission to Make Studies 
of and Recommendations for Housing Throughout the State. 
(April, 1557). 

  

Significance: made the following recommendations for state 
action in the area of housing discrimination: 1) 
Discrimination against negro tenants in our cities, and 
against negro owners in our suburbs continues to be 
practiced; 2) The Connecticut Commission on Civil Rights 
should undertake a more vigorous program of education to 
solve the serious problem of discrimination in private 
housing; 3) Legislation that would prevent discrimination in 
the sale or rental of private housing should be seriously 
considered by the general assembly; 4) The federal 
government should study the desirability of construction in 
small numbers of low-income housing units dispersed 
throughout the community. 

8. Stetler, Henry. Connecticut Commission on Civil Rights. 
Racial Integration in Public Housing Projects in 
connecticut. (1955). : 
  

  

Significance: report indicates that 1) illegal segregation 
was still being practiced in state public housing projects 
after 1949; 2) some authorities seem to concentrate black 
families in certain projects; 3) Housing officials 
frequently justify these arrangements on the ground of 
opposition from white tenants or applicants; 4) Commission 
found that in older housing projects, desegregation 
proceeded more slowly, if at all. 

  

This report shows that there were particular problems with 
discrimination in state run housing; All six of the Federal 
low-rent projects opened between July 1949 and the date of 

  

  

 



  

this report were integrated, while only one-half of the 23 
state moderate rental projects opened during the same period 
were integrated. “Since many black families were eligible 
income-wise for State moderate rental housing, the existence 
of five "all-white” and six "no pattern” projects in this 
group raises a question as to authority policy in the 
admission of Negro applicants.” (p. ) 

  

  

  

9. Commission on Civil Rights. Report of the Commission on 
Civil Rights, 1950-1951. (1951). 

  

  

Significance: Concludes that residential integration is 
hampered by the legacy of pre-1949 discriminatory federal 
and state public housing policies and practices; one of the 
most difficult problems the Commission has encountered in 
administering the public housing statute has been the 
breaking down of previously established patterns of 
segregation in housing projects set up before the anti- 
discrimination law was passed; the record of changes of 
discriminatory policy in existing public housing projects 
has been spotty. 

  

10. Hadden, Kenneth & Werling, Thomas. UCONN. Residential 
Segregation in Metropolitan Connecticut. ( ) 

  

  

Significance: This report concludes that 1) neither free 
choice nor poverty is a sufficient explanation for the 
universally high degree of segregation in American cities. 
Discrimination is the principal cause of segregation; 2) 
there has been no general tendency toward decreased 
segregation of whites from blacks in the Connecticut’s major 
cities during the decades of the 1960s; 3) residential 
segregation can have a variety of consequences, mainly 
detrimental to the minority group; 4) the presence of 
segregated neighborhoods will, in the absence of remedial 
steps (e.g., interzone busing, careful construction of 
attendance zone lines, etc.), result in individual schools 
within central cities which are racially and/or ethnically 
distinct; 5) an inability to modify the pattern of 
segregated residences and an unwillingness to take the 
extraordinary steps =~ such as busing or redefining 
attendance zones -to negate the effects of residential 
segregation result almost inevitably in segregated schools. 

  

 



PLAINTIFFS! FOURTH REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION 
  

List the percentage of students from the Hartford gchool 

system and from the tgurrounding communities” who are: 

a, Children from families where substance abuse is a 

problem; 

». Children from families where one OI more family 

member suffers from mental disease OF illness; 

children who have parents who themselves have a 

history of low educational attainment (e.g. no high 

school diploma); 

Children who have received inadequate prenatal care; 

Children who have received inadequate health care; 

Children who have been influenced by or participate 

in criminal activity: 

g. Children who are 1eft alone for more than three 

hours per weekday; 

(See Defendants’ Answer to Interrogatory No. 7) 

2 * Provide the data which demonstrates the rate of growth 

on the Connecticut Mastery test of at-risk students in 

Hartford and the rate of growth of their counterparts in 

the surrounding school districts. 

Produce the ([empiral??] studies which you deem 

tynreliable” in your answer TO Plaintiffs’ First Set of 

Interrogatories no. 18. 

ED 152 Racial Survey System Summary for Hartford and 

surrounding communities. 

All documents which constitute the response by DOE tO 

failure rate on mastery tests (interrogatory?) 

Description of written work objectives of the Mastery 

Test Program. 

EEO analyses of Mastery Teast data. 

NI O0 @ £  



  BY 

12. 

14, 

18, 

16. 

17. 

18. 

19. 

20. 

21. 

22, 

23. 

24. 

Numbers of students from Hartford and surrounding 

communities receiving diplomas without meeting the 

requirements of graduation. 

PIP goals and objectives and MIP for each full-time and 

part-time employee and consultant in DOE Data Collection 

and Analysis Unit. 

current School/Staff Report (more recent than 1988). 

DOE Minimum Standards for art and music. 

Figcal Year 1992-93 DOE Budget, budget options, budget 

reductions. 

Documents which show monies allocated for racrulitment of 

minority teachers from 198¢ - present. 

DOE pamphlet “Data Collection Procedures Relating to 

public Elementary and secondary Institutions of 

Education in Connecticut.” 

All documents which show class size by grade and school 

for Hartford and surrounding communities. 

Regional Magnet Planning Report and proposal for funding 

written in or around 1979-1980 which included a foreign 

language. 

High school magnet for Hartford area. 

Original report {gsued by Education Equity Study 

Committee which was not part of final report and minutes 

of Education Equity Study Committee. 

Number and percentage of black and Latino students in 

sach school system from 1330 to the present in Hartford 

and surrounding communities. 

Documents listed in interrogatory no. 5. 

Copies of resumes of all defendants' experts listed in 

Defendants’ Response to plaintiffs! First Set of 

Interrogatories No. 2. 

Copies of ED-027 Regional Schools pupil Data Report. 

Copies of ED-098 Civil Rights Survey. 

Copies of ED-158P Public High School Graduate Follow-up. 

MIO IED 18 ‘971 

 



  ) Sp 

25. 

26. 

27; 

28. 

29. 

30. 

Copies of ED-229 Rilingual Education Grant Application. 

Copies of ED-230 LEA Bilingual Education Evaluation. 

Copies of ED-322 Grant Application for Regional Special 

Education Facility. 

ED 101 Civil Rights Survey -- School System Summary and 

gp 102 Civil Rights Survey -- Individual School Report 

(ck.) 

All policy statements concerning educational quality 

adopted by the State Board of Education since 1968. 

All documents which indicate class size in each grade in 

each school in Hartford and surrounding communities. 

MIO 0 EC 15 "271