Low-income apartment plan draws discriminatory phone calls

One man left a message on developer Dane Hillyard's machine identifying himself as a San Francisco Bay area woman and saying, "I wishes to rent one a them."

"I don't have any money, but I am subsidized by everybody," the caller said, thanking Hillyard for trying to provide low-income housing. "I gots nine kids an' three more on the way."

Another man left a message at Hillyard's Pacific West Builders office saying he wanted to move his seven sons from the ethnically diverse city of Oakland, Calif., into the Diamond Creek apartments because they will have a community basketball court, the developer said.

Reno Councilwoman Sherrie Doyle, an avid supporter of the project, said she also received a harassing phone call.

"I was disgusted," she said. "It reminded me of growing up and people would make fun of me for being half-Korean. It's pure racism."

Many homeowners in the Double Diamond subdivision have opposed the project ever since the City Council gave developers a $6 million affordable housing bond in February.

Homeowners fear the project will lower property values, ruin their lifestyle, burden schools and adversely affect roads.

But the opposition also is clearly tinged with racism, said Lonnie Feemster, president of the Reno-Sparks chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who called it segregation by economics.

Minorities make up less than 2 percent of the neighborhood population.

"There have been cases where people say 'If I prevent affordable housing in my neighborhood, I can keep minorities out,"' Feemster said.

Nevada was known as the "Mississippi of the West" until state legislators passed fair-housing laws in the 1960s.

"I was shocked," Hillyard said. "I didn't know this kind of thing exists in Reno, Nev., today."

Double Diamond Ranch owner Craig Rowe acknowledges he mailed letters to homeowners, urging them to let elected officials know they opposed the project.

But he decried the phone calls, calling them embarrassing and offensive.

"I don't condone this," he said. "If I find out who did it, I will personally go talk to them. Did we help organize these people? Sure we did. But we didn't tell them what to say."

Rowe insisted the dispute is not racially discriminatory, saying homeowners have legitimate concerns about the project.

"We keep hearing that we're a bunch of bigots and that we don't want these people in our back yards ... We have a responsibility to protect these (homeowners)," he said.

Feemster said the NAACP chapter would consider filing a fair housing complaint if the opposition continued.

"It's abominable that those people don't have courage to stand up and take the sheet off," he said.

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