Starrett City Associates is a group of investors, led by

Disque Deane Disque D. Deane (July 6, 1921 – November 8, 2010) was a prominent American financier and investor. He was the founder of, and a general partner in Starrett City Associates, which owned Starrett City in Brooklyn (now called Spring Creek Towers). ...

, that owned the

Starrett City Starrett City (formally known as the Spring Creek Towers) is a housing development in the Spring Creek section of East New York, in Brooklyn, New York City. It is located on a peninsula on the north shore of Jamaica Bay, bounded by Fresh Creek t ...

housing complex in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

until 2008. The firm is best known for unsuccessfully defending a landmark civil rights lawsuit that concerned "

reverse discrimination Reverse discrimination is a term for discrimination against members of a dominant or majority group, in favor of members of a minority or historically disadvantaged group. Groups may be defined in terms of ethnicity, gender identity, nationality, ...

" and

racial quota Racial quotas in employment and education are numerical requirements for hiring, promoting, admitting and/or graduating members of a particular Race (classification of human beings), racial group. Racial quotas are often established as means of ...

s in the housing complex, and for controversy during the sale of the development in the mid-2000s.

History

was constructed from 1972 to 1975, as part of the Fresh Creek Urban Renewal Act to develop the area now known as

Spring Creek, Brooklyn Spring Creek, previously called Spring Creek Basin, is a neighborhood within the East New York section of Brooklyn in New York City. It roughly comprises the southern portions of East New York between Flatlands Avenue to the north, and Jamaic ...

. At the time it was built, Starrett City was the largest housing development in the nation, and remains the largest federally subsidized apartment complex.

Discrimination charges

In 1980, the

NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&nb ...

initiated a class-action suit against Starrett City Associates and charged that the owner of the housing complex attempted to maintain racial quotas by selective approval of tenants based on racial and ethnic profiles. The quotas caused minority applicants to wait longer than white applicants for spaces in the complex. Starrett City Associates argued that the quotas were necessary to maintain racial balance. In other words, if the quotas had not been in place, the population would have been disproportionately non-white. The

New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal The New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) is an agency of the New York state government responsible for administering housing and community development programs to promote affordable housing, community revitalization, an ...

was also named as a defendant in the suit because it had oversight of the public money spent to build the project and allowed the quotas to exist. The case was appealed to the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

in the fall of 1988, and the court ruled against Starrett. In 1990, Starrett proposed to make apartments available to Soviet Jews who came to the United States in order to maintain racial diversity.

Sale of Starrett City

In early 2007, Starrett City Associates attempted to sell Starrett City for $1.3 billion to

Clipper Equity LLC Clipper Equity LLC is a partnership led by David Bistricer and Sam Levinson. The firm owns more than 60 buildings, with thousands of residential units, in New York and New Jersey. The partnership are known for their attempted purchase of the Starr ...

, a partnership of

David Bistricer David Bistricer (born August 10, 1949) is a New York-based real estate developer and the founder and principal of Clipper Equity. His firm focuses on the conversion of non-residential buildings to residential uses. One of Bistricer's latest vent ...

and Sam Levinson. The sale was ultimately unsuccessful due to public opposition. However, Clipper Equity made another attempt in August 2007. A renewed effort to sell the property began in June 2008. Starrett City Associates finally sold the complex in September 2017.{{cite web , title=Sale of Brooklyn Housing Complex Would Benefit Trump , website=The New York Times , date=2017-09-06 , url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/nyregion/starrett-city-housing-complex-trump-sale.html , access-date=2018-07-08, last=Bagli, first=Charles V.

References

External links

PlanNYC
Civil liberties in the United States Public housing in the United States