A fair housing ordinance, which protects residents from discriminatory housing practices, has been adopted by the city of Española to allow the city to receive a federal Housing Department grant.
The City Council approved a resolution Sept. 23 to add the ordinance. City Grants Administrator Lupita DeHerrera said the action was necessary to receive a $500,000 Community Development Block Grant.
The last time the city received such a grant was in 1996, Interim City Manager Veronica Albin said. A fair housing ordinance should have been passed at that time, she said.
“There was not one on the books that I could find,” she said.
Albin said the ordinance will not cause any drastic changes to normal city procedures.
“Our demographics throughout the city are pretty similar,” she said.
Most neighborhoods are racially inclusive, she said. If there had been issues regarding discrimination, it would have been covered under the federal Fair Housing Act.
The city added its own ordinance because the Department will not allocate funds without it, she said.
DeHerrera said the ordinance would protect against any practices that grouped certain ethnic groups into specific neighborhoods.
The resolution also addresses anti-displacement practices, she said. According to the resolution, if the project that the grant money is used for interferes with low or moderate-income dwellings, the city would have to relocate the people living there.
DeHerrera said this won’t be an issue since the funds will be used to blend water from two of the city’s wells. And she said the city has already taken care of the resolution’s requirements regarding citizen participation. The city held two public hearings Nov. 29, 2007 and Dec. 6, 2007, she said, to inform community members of the intended use of the funds. No one showed up at either of the meetings, DeHerrera said.
The ordinance may have an effect on the city’s hiring practices, Albin said. It requires that low-income individuals be brought into the city’s workforce and the workforce of any contractors chosen for grant-funded projects, she said. If there are two equally qualified candidates the city is supposed to choose the lower-income one, she said.
How the city will implement that provision is still unknown, Albin said.
The city applied for the grant Dec. 13, 2007 and received an award notice June 3, DeHerrera said. The city received the maximum award amount for the grant, she said.
The city applied for the grant to address problems with wells 4 and 7, DeHerrera said. Well 7 has high levels of nitrates, while well 4 has high levels of arsenic and fluoride as well as nitrates.
To fix the problem the city plans to construct a separate water line and tank between the two wells to reduce the concentration of contaminants, a project estimated to cost $1.1 million.
According to DeHerrera, Water Trust Board funds are currently being used to fund the project. The Community Block grant requires the city to pay 10 percent of each invoice, she said.