U.S. Gives Westchester Deadline to Comply With Housing Pact Four years after Westchester County entered into a landmark desegregation agreement with the federal government, relations between the two sides are hanging by a thread amid federal threats of contempt suits and revocation of money. The showdown is raising unsettling echoes of the disastrous 27-year-long court fight over housing that virtually bankrupted Yonkers, the county's largest city. The United States Justice Department last week sent Westchester officials a letter saying that the county had failed to enact legislation prohibiting housing discrimination based on source of income as ordered by the settlement and by a federal court ruling. The letter said the Justice Department would seek a contempt ruling against the county and County Executive Robert P. Astorino if he did not comply by Thursday. Additionally, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development has said it will revoke $7.4 million in money allocated to Westchester and send it elsewhere if the county does not take steps to comply with at least two elements of the settlement by the same date. With the deadlines looming, the Westchester County Board of Legislators voted 12 to 4 on Monday to authorize a lawsuit challenging HUD's decision to take away the $7.4 million, which would have gone to support housing and community needs. Mr. Astorino, a Republican who was elected after the settlement was reached and has made his opposition to elements of it a centerpiece of his administration, used his annual State of the County address on Tuesday to reiterate his stark differences with the federal government. He accused the federal government of going beyond the original agreement, trying to undermine all zoning decisions in the county and making "outrageous" demands not in the agreement. "Washington bureaucrats, who you will never see or meet, want the power to determine who will live where and how each neighborhood will look," he said. What's at stake is the fundamental right of our cities, towns and villages to plan and zone for themselves. He added: "Westchester residents didn't stop becoming American citizens the day the deal was signed in 2009." The complaints have vividly shown the high stakes involved and the tensions between Westchester and the Obama administration since they reached one of the most ambitious desegregation settlements in decades, after a discrimination ruling against the county in 2009. In the settlement, the county agreed to create 750 houses and apartments for moderate-income people in overwhelmingly white communities and aggressively market them to nonwhites in Westchester and New York City. The county says it has done exactly that. Westchester officials say the county is ahead of schedule in building the affordable housing in largely white communities, as stipulated in the agreement. In his speech, Mr. Astorino said the county was required to have financing for 300 units of affordable housing in the designated communities by the end of the year. It already has 305, he said. But HUD and many housing advocates say the county's obligation under the agreement is not just to build units but to take steps to prevent discrimination in housing. Maurice Jones, the housing department's deputy secretary, said in an interview that the county deserved praise for making progress in building housing units. But, he said, despite continuing assistance and guidance over several years, it had clearly failed to meet the broader goals of the agreement. Regarding the two elements that the county was faulted for not following, Mr. Jones said the county had failed to enact legislation banning discrimination in housing based on the source of income - like Section 8 housing vouchers or Social Security payments. The Legislature passed the measure, but Mr. Astorino vetoed it in 2010. Second, Mr. Jones said, HUD and subsequent court rulings have said the county has failed to conduct an adequate review of impediments to fair housing in its zoning and housing ordinances. "The facts speak for themselves," he said. They have not upheld their part of the agreement. The letter from the Justice Department, dated April 19 and written on behalf of Preet Bharara, United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, gives Mr. Astorino a Thursday deadline to reintroduce the source-of-income legislation that he previously vetoed. It also mandates that he agree in writing that he will sign it. Mr. Astorino said the mandate would put unfair limits on landlords to participate in programs like Section 8 housing. But federal courts have ruled that his stance violates the 2009 settlement, a decision upheld April 5 in a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. And while the county said its own analyses found no discriminatory policies in zoning in the county, HUD said in a letter on March 13 that the county's analysis had failed to examine five of six discriminatory zoning practices. Mr. Jones said communities all across the country had routinely examined barriers to fair housing, and he called it unacceptable for Westchester simply to conclude that it had none. "That claim is obviously not persuasive to us," he said. Ken Jenkins, a Democrat who is chairman of the Westchester County Board of Legislators, and who has announced that he will seek the party's nomination to challenge Mr. Astorino, said opposition to the settlement had become a political strategy for Mr. Astorino. "He's using it to try to pump up his base, convince people the settlement is a bad thing and the federal government is overreaching," he said. Referring to the litigation filed in 1980 and settled in 2007 in Yonkers over the construction of 800 units of public and affordable housing, he said, "That's what happened in Yonkers, and that's where we're headed right now." HUD officials said they did not need a resolution by Thursday, but some movement toward one. More than 80 percent of the $7.4 million in dispute has been allocated for projects in communities other than the 31 higher-income communities in the settlement. "Our goal is to allocate federal funding to Westchester County for the primary benefit of its lower income residents," HUD said in a statement. But if the county continues to break its own promises and defy its own obligations, we must begin the process of reallocating these resources to communities that can put them to good use.