Former tenants of the Orange Avenue Apartments in Tallahassee are suing the local housing authority over its redevelopment plan for the public housing complex, alleging the plan violates the federal Fair Housing Act.
Residents of the 200-unit complex, who are overwhelmingly Black, have been displaced as a result of the Tallahassee Housing Authority’s (THA’s) redevelopment plan, which doesn’t provide comparable replacement housing, according to the lawsuit filed on behalf of former tenants and the Orange Avenue United Tenants’ Association.
“Rather than improve apartments that THA claims are no longer suitable for its tenants, THA seeks to reduce its involvement in the city’s affordable housing market by transferring the property underlying the Orange Avenue Apartments to a private company that will demolish and redevelop the property into mixed-income housing that will not include any easily affordable units,” the complaint filed on June 21 by Legal Services of North Florida states.
The only financial help the tenants have been given consists of housing vouchers that most landlords in the city do not accept, according to the lawsuit. The tenants will ultimately be forced to relocate to more racially segregated neighborhoods in the southern portion of the city – in violation of the goals of the Fair Housing Act, the complaint says.
THA Executive Director Brenda Williams said she could not comment on the lawsuit. But Legal Services of North Florida indicated that the federal court in the Northern District of Florida should grant a preliminary injunction to stop the defendants from implementing the redevelopment master plan.
“Our complaint shines a light on the Fair Housing Act violations by the Tallahassee Housing Authority … and how the demolition and redevelopment of the Orange Avenue Apartments significantly displaces and harms low-income, Black, Tallahassee residents,” the group’s spokeswoman, Charlotte Waters, said in an email to the Florida Record. “In addition, residents who oppose or openly criticize the redevelopment plans for Orange Avenue Apartments have been ignored and, in some cases, retaliated against.”
THA has refused to enter discussions with the tenants association and has blocked the association from receiving federal funds in a bid to silence the organization, the lawsuit states.