Former Biddeford Sober House Owner Files Federal Complaint
The former operator of a sober house in Biddeford has filed a federal discriminatory housing complaint against the city, saying it was forced to leave a downtown apartment that it used as a temporary home for men fighting substance abuse. Jesse Harvey of Journey House LLC operated a sober house last year in an apartment at 45 Hill St. that could accommodate six men. Harvey’s complaint claims the city violated the federal fair housing law when a code enforcement officer told Harvey’s landlord that the sober house was an illegal operation because the building did not have a sprinkler system. Sprinkler systems are not required for older traditional apartment buildings, but the city had raised the possibility that the unit containing the sober house could qualify as a rooming house and be subject to additional safety standards. The sober house was open for a year in Biddeford before closing last December. Journey House Sober Living now operates in Sanford.
Meanwhile, the seven-unit apartment building on Hill Street that is the subject of the dispute was destroyed April 2 in a fire that killed one elderly resident. The State Fire Marshal’s Office has said it may never determine a cause of the fire because of the extensive damage it caused. The federal housing discrimination complaint was filed March 27 and is unrelated to the fire that took place a week later. In the complaint, Harvey said the city and Code Enforcement Officer Roby Fecteau used zoning and land use ordinances to discriminate against residents of the sober house. The complaint claims the city told landlord Richard Langevin in October 2017 that the sober house was an "illegal operation" because the building did not have sprinklers. The city became aware of the sober house after two of its residents sought General Assistance from the city. As part of that process, the landlord completed a "Landlord Verification of Rental Unit" that required a building inspection if one had not been completed in the past year, k-fonik.ru Jacques said.
The city’s General Assistance administrator requested an inspection because the apartment had not been inspected for "quite some time" and its condition was unknown, Jacques said. The city says the complainants refused to provide access to the apartment unit despite reassurances that the inspection was only to determine if the apartment unit was safe, furnituresales.shop according to the city’s response to the complaint. "While city representatives initially expressed concerns that the operation might need to be classified as a rooming house within a multi-unit apartment building thereby potentially requiring a sprinkler system within the units, Complainant continued to operate the sober house within the apartment building while the city sought clarification from the State of Maine Fire Marshal’s Office," Jacques wrote in the response to the complaint. The city was still waiting on more information about the state requirements from the fire marshal’s office when the sober house closed. An investigation into the complaint will be done by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. The department will issue a charge if the investigation indicates reasonable cause that an unlawful discriminatory housing practice occurred. If no reasonable cause is found, the complaint will be dismissed, according to a letter from the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity notifying the city of the complaint. Da ta was generated by GSA Content Gene rator DEMO .
On Feb. 1, 1960, four Black students from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, David Richmond and Ezell Blair Jr., Deals sat down at the counter of a Woolworth's and asked to be served. They knew they wouldn't be, Sales because the lunch counter at which they sat was for whites only. Still, they continued to sit and refused to get up until they were forced out when the store closed for the night. The next day, a much larger group of students showed up either to participate or witness the sit-in, and after newspapers and civil rights groups heard about the activity, sit-ins were held in several cities across the country. A group of students would sit down at a lunch counter and ask to be served. If they were given food or coffee, they'd move on down to the next counter. Once they were refused service, they would remain seated until served.
The key during the sit-ins was nonviolence - if participants were hit, they couldn't hit back. If they were taunted, they remained silent. Students also dressed in their Sunday best to set themselves apart from the heckling white students. They were met with the usual share of beatings and imprisonments, and by August 1961, more than 3,000 students across the country were arrested. Another group that set out to test the judgment of the Supreme Court was the Freedom Riders. On May 4, 1961, a racially mixed group of people left Washington, D.C., on a bus and headed for New Orleans. Along the way, groups mixed up their seating - whites moved to the Blacks-only section and vice versa. They knew what they were doing was perfectly legal according to recent Supreme Court cases, but they also knew they'd meet heavy opposition from the public. They simply wanted to make sure the government would respond in a moment of crisis. With rising tensions and the possibility of violence, the Freedom Riders were even prepared for death.
