AG Calls Town, County Action Against Development 'Anti-Semitic'

CHESTER, NY — The state attorney general has filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit against the Town of Chester and Orange County alleging they engaged in a concerted and systematic effort to prevent Hasidic Jewish families from moving to Chester by blocking the construction of a housing development. The original lawsuit, which was filed in July by the developers of "The Greens at Chester," outlined countless discriminatory and unnecessary actions that Chester and Orange County have taken to stop the homes from being built in order to prevent Jewish families from buying and occupying them, which are gross violations of the Fair Housing Act.

Attorney General Letitia James said that blocking the construction of homes to prevent a religious group from living in a community is discriminatory.

"This campaign to deny housing to members of the Jewish community is not only a clear violation of our laws, but is antithetical to our basic values and blatantly anti-Semitic," she said.

"New York has a longstanding commitment to ensure equal housing opportunities for all residents — regardless of race, gender or religious identity — and we will ensure this commitment is upheld," James said.

The Fair Housing Act said that is is unlawful for anyone to refuse to sell or rent a dwelling based on an individuals' religion, race, sex, national origin or familial status, among other protected classes.

James said the lawsuit outlines the town and county's anti-Semitic campaign to specifically target and prevent Hasidic Jewish developers from operating in the town and Hasidic Jewish families from residing in the town.

In October 2017, The Greens purchased a 117-acre property in the Town of Chester which had been fully approved for residential development under the ownership of the previous developer.

Since the purchase, The Greens said town and county officials have repeatedly sought to block development of the site and have openly expressed discriminatory intent to block the development at public meetings, explicitly referencing their desire to keep Hasidic families out of their community.

James said that, additionally, the town and county passed a law to restrict the size of houses that could be built in an attempt to make them uninhabitable for families, proposed extra taxes on the development, tried to limit the hours of construction and wanted to require the developer to provide personal information of its managing partners to local officials.

They also imposed costly and unnecessary requirements that the developer had to comply with before construction, including mandating a new sewer waste line be rerouted, requesting the main road moved by 10 feet and even asking that the Department of Health reconsider an approval for a water supply permit, which the county had previously granted, James said.

"After the developer complied with each of these unnecessary requests, the town and county denied all building permit applications, even though the developer clearly satisfied the requirements necessary to be granted the permits," she said.

James said there's been an alarming rise in the rates of anti-Semitic incidents in New York and across the country and called this type of intolerance and discriminatory behavior, especially at the hands of local government, despicable.

"Intolerance towards others only fosters hate and makes our communities weaker," she said.

In response to Patch's request for a comment, Orange County's attorney Langdon Chapman said the litigation against the county has no merit.

He said The Greens property is not in the county sewer district, so as such, they cannot be considered for sewer as part of the county's sewage capacity available to the district.

Regarding the water, the county said constituents expressed concerns about water quantity and quality if the project goes forward.

Chapman said the county advised the state of those concerns, and the state requested, in 2018, the resubmission of the application for public water supply improvement plans due to changes in regulations and design standards and the county's growth since original approval was issued in 2002.

"In short, the attorney general has not identified a single permit being withheld by the county," Chapman said. "Asking the state to do its job and review constituent concerns about water quality is perfectly reasonable.

"Given the above, the attorney general should re-visit their claims against the county," he said.

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