For some, housing discrimination lawsuit is far from over

Charlene Sloan and Antionette Wimbush are plaintiffs in a longstanding housing discrimination lawsuit filed against Hamtramck over four decades ago. As the lawsuit nears its end, they and others still have grievances.

Charlene Sloan and Antionette Wimbush are plaintiffs in a longstanding housing discrimination lawsuit filed against Hamtramck over four decades ago. As the lawsuit nears its end, they and others still have grievances.

 
By Charles Sercombe
As Hamtramck’s infamous housing discrimination lawsuit inches ever closer to being settled once and for all, there are some plaintiffs in the case who feel left out.
“We have been done an injustice,” says Charlene Sloan of Grand Haven.
Before we go on with her story, let’s go back a bit in history. In the 1960s Hamtramck city officials tapped into federal “urban renewal” funds that were meant to clear out blighted areas and build anew.
But a group of African-American residents claimed city officials targeted mostly black neighborhoods in an effort to get rid of them. Flash forward and a class action lawsuit was filed against the city.
The case lingered for decades in federal court, but an agreement came along where the city agreed to build 200 housing units. Problem was, there was no money. All those funds for urban renewal were long gone.
Even if there had been money, both sides squabbled over how to proceed with building new housing and how plaintiffs could acquire them.
And so some 30 years went by until city officials – with the help of Wayne County development officials — came up with a plan that both sides agreed on. Then just several years ago there was an infusion of federal dollars that sealed the deal and completed the housing construction – well almost, but that’s a different story.
One of the deals that city officials and the plaintiffs’ attorney, Michael Barnhart, agreed on was a home fix-up offer to homeowners in the Grand Haven-Dyar-Dequindre neighborhood, one of the neighborhoods targeted in the 1960s for housing demo.
These were residents who weren’t chased out by the city during the 1960s urban renewal fiasco.
One of those residents is Charlene Sloan.
A deal offered about 10 years ago – or so — to her and other homeowners in the area was that they could receive free house renovations. The details of the plan are not immediately available, and the players in this deal are long gone.
Except for Barnhart, the plaintiff’s attorney and still their current attorney.
The Review asked him to explain the details of the offer, but he refused to talk, saying: “I’m just not going to discuss matters involving my clientele. Have them give me a call.”
Barnhart then abruptly hung up on a reporter, but then called back to apologize.
The last time Sloan said she talked to Barnhart he told her, “It’s over with.”
Since that conversation Sloan said she has been unable to get a hold of Barnhart. If he had taken her call, he would have heard plenty.
Sloan and three other residents from the neighborhood recently met with The Review.
They said that while it may look good on paper that they got free house fix-ups, the work performed was shoddy and incomplete.
Sloan said they even went to the federal judge overseeing the case all these years, Judge Damon Keith, who still handles the case even in his retirement.
“We tried to get him to listen to us,” she said.
John McCotter owns a home at Dyar and Woodland which is 105 years old. He questions why anyone would bother to fix up a house that old.
“Why would you put a new door on a 100-year-old house?” he said.
Instead, McCotter said they should have demolished his house and built a new one – a new house just like other plaintiffs and their descendents were able to purchase with generous subsidies and tax breaks.
Anthony Whitlock lives down the street from Sloan on Grand Haven.
He complains of yellow water from his water faucet and frozen pipes in the winter. The renovations he received were superficial at best.
“After a 30-year lawsuit that’s all we got,” he said. “What did Barnhart get paid?”
“We got nothing,” McCotter added.
Barnhart’s role in representing the housing plaintiffs has long been contentious and expensive.
From January 2011 through February 2015, he has been paid $905,305, according to financial records the city filed recently in federal court.
Yes, you read that right.
The city has been paying Barnhart’s salary per court order.
For all of the 40 years this case has dragged on Hamtramck taxpayers have been footing the legal bills for Barnhart and the various city – and other — attorneys on the case.
It was not immediately known how much city attorneys have been paid. The current city attorney on the matter is John Clark. He did not return a call for comment, nor has he returned several other calls regarding this issue and other matters.
Barnhart has been the plaintiffs’ attorney for most of the 40 years of the lawsuit’s existence, and it’s anyone’s guess how much he has earned during that time.
Could be millions.
With their attorney not returning calls, Sloan said she hopes some other attorney will help her and her neighbors out, or maybe get a new judge appointed to take over the case.
“We’ve been asking but no one is listening,” she said.

2 Responses to For some, housing discrimination lawsuit is far from over

  1. Arthur Bright

    April 12, 2019 at 11:22 pm

    We’re those residing on the other side of the rail-road tracks from Hamtramck–Northend–Russell, effected by this lawsuit? We were to forced to leave our homes as well to make room for I-75.

  2. Arthur Bright

    April 12, 2019 at 11:24 pm

    By the way Mr Bernhardt should be ashamed of himself.

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