Our Inevitable Return to The Supreme Court & Clovewood's Affordable Housing Myth
Let's take a quick look at two subjects residents of Southern Orange County are going to hear A LOT about in the not too distant future.
Howdy.
I know, every time I say there will be a short post, it turns out to be like 3,000 words.
I will do my best to keep things brief. I will probably fail.
Today, I’m going to debunk a claim being made by The Village of South Blooming Grove / The United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove.
The two organizations are now one and the same, violating the First Amendment of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause.
I’m also going to briefly discuss the Supreme Court’s Lemon Test, and how Local Law 1 of 2021, passed by The Village of South Blooming Grove, fails that test.
The question though is, what’s the legal remedy if this hypothetical case went to the Supreme Court?
Dissolve the Village of South Blooming Grove? Maybe!
But then again, the Supreme Court is currently stacked with deeply unpopular, anti-woman, religious nut jobs. So who knows. They may use this hypothetical case to further erode The Lemon Test.
Either way.
Both of these items are things you need to keep an eye on.
You will be hearing about both A LOT in the weeks and months ahead.
Pictured above: Jack Lemon, who The Lemon Test is NOT named after. Jack Lemon did; however, appear in the 1999 film remake of Inherit The Wind. A play about another court case involving religious fanatics and the Establishment Clause.
Clovewood’s Affordable Housing Myth
Let’s start with the easy one.
Something we can demonstrate factually — see above — is that Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein’s United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove (UJC) is urging members to tell the DEC that the Clovewood development will help alleviate the housing crisis in New York State.
This is false.
I’ve already covered this, but I suspect there will be a forthcoming PR campaign and effort to get Governor Kathy Hochul involved.
Especially since the UJC keeps echoing the governor’s push for more housing and more affordable housing to be built.
Remember: Both Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein, Village of South Blooming Grove employees, have successfully lobbied Governor Hochul in the past to get what they want.
You better believe, after the resounding shellacking Keen Equities received during those DEC calls on Wednesday, April 3rd, that the first call Keen and friends made Thursday morning was to the Governor’s office.
So, let’s be clear …
According to the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) submitted to the DEC, Keen Equities LLC wants to build 600 single family homes.
There is also the potential to add one accessory apartment to each single family home, something that will assuredly be rubber stamped by Town of Blooming Grove Councilman, Simon Schwartz, who sits on the South Blooming Grove Village Planning Board.
In South Blooming Grove right now, things are being built before the Village Planning Board even meets to approve those things.
Then, when the Planning Board does meet, those already in the work projects are unanimously approved. Something that violates Town Councilman Schwartz’s fiduciary responsibility to both the Town and to the Village residents he swore an oath to represent.
In the Clovewood FEIS, only 94 homes will be made “affordable.”
That’s it. 94.
So of the 600 homes being built, 506 of them would not be made affordable.
Those accessory apartments need to be approved first before they can be built. So, technically speaking, they don’t yet count as part of this discussion of what Clovewood will and won’t provide.
Since a lawyer claiming to represent The Village of South Blooming Grove wants everyone to focus narrowly on the permits being requested, and nothing else, then only the 600 houses are relevant to this discussion. Not what will be built in the future — Regardless of the fact that you and I know those accessory houses will immediately be built.
There’s one other point to consider, and that’s this: The 600 homes will NOT be made available to everyone equally, which violates the Fair Housing Act.
The Fair Housing Act (FHA) explicitly states:
The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in housing based upon religion. This prohibition covers instances of overt discrimination against members of a particular religion as well less direct actions, such as zoning ordinances designed to limit the use of private homes as a places of worship. The number of cases filed since 1968 alleging religious discrimination is small in comparison to some of the other prohibited bases, such as race or national origin. The Act does contain a limited exception that allows non-commercial housing operated by a religious organization to reserve such housing to persons of the same religion. [Emphasis Added]
In this case, the FHA is being violated by Clovewood housing only being made available to members of the Satmar in the Haredi community.
How do we know this is to be true?
Meet The City of Joel
Let’s accept this as fact for a moment.
If it’s true that South Blooming Grove is a neighborhood in the city of Kiryas Joel, then it falls under the imprimatur of Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum. This is indisputable, as Palm Tree/Kiryas Joel is a theocracy by every possible definition.
That means, hanhallah (Teitelbaum and the leadership class) will approve who gets to live in the Clovewood development, and more importantly, who does not.
Therefore, this new housing being built will not alleviate New York’s housing shortage since it will not be made available and accessible to all residents of New York equally or fairly.
Now, this part here is pure speculation, but I suspect an agreement was made with one of the dissident factions in Kiryas Joel that the dissidents can live relatively unencumbered in South Blooming Grove.
Why do I suggest this?
-Mendel Schwimmer, one of the plaintiffs in the original lawsuit against South Blooming Grove, ran against Kiryas Joel mayor, Abraham Wieder and lost. Schwimmer is part of one of the dissident factions. This was covered by The New York Times many years ago. A few years after Schwimmer’s election loss, the land in South Blooming Grove was purchased from the Greene Family by Keen Equities LLC. Since Schwimmer’s defeat, as far a the public knows, things have been fairly quiet between the dissident factions and the ruling faction in Palm Tree.
I suspect Keen Equities is the reason why.
-Jacob Gold, a defendant in the original lawsuit along with Schwimmer, is the employer of Joel Stern and Y.C. Rubin at Windsor Global. Rubin is the manager for Keen Equities on all documentation submitted to the DEC. Stern, an unelected village employee has publicly identified himself as both the CEO and COO of Windsor Global, a company where Gold is listed as president. Jacob Gold is the second largest shareholder in Keen Equities.
-Zigmond Brach is the largest shareholder of Keen Equities LLC. According to the Times Herald Record when reporting on the transaction between the Greene family and Brach, Brach is also identified part of the dissident group that Schwimmer and Gold belong to.
I can’t prove it yet conclusively, but where there’s smoke, there’s often fire.
If I’m right, then the Clovewood housing is being built for local followers of Zalman Teitelbaum, Aaron’s brother and chief political rival.
The Satmar, quite publicly and in many court cases since the 1970s, including one before the Supreme Court, have stated a desire to self-segregate from the larger community to avoid what they deem “contamination” from the outside.
This self-segregation involves rules about renting and making homes available to outsiders.
In Brooklyn, during the first gentrification wave to hit Williamsburg, those landlords in the Satmar community who rented to outsiders received furious blowback by the community, as documented in the book, A Fortress In Brooklyn.
So.
What we have here isn’t affordable housing being built to alleviate the housing shortage in New York State.
What we actually have here is 506 homes being built with the express purpose of being provided to dissident members of a religious sect.
And those homes will not be made available to all New Yorkers, which violates the FHA.
For that reason, any time you hear the claim that Clovewood will provide affordable housing or alleviate the housing shortage, you should respond with the information I’ve provided here.
Because you’re going to be hearing this BS claim A LOT real soon.
The Lemon Test
I know. I’m trying to keep things brief.
We don’t have time to get into everything with Lemon. I will tell you that corrupt, anti-woman Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch recommended schools ignore the Lemon Test in 2022.
And I will also tell you that religious extremists have tried to kill The Lemon Test since the 1980s.
At the time of this writing, the test still stands, and it goes something like this:
To decide if a law violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, there is a three prong test that can be applied. I’m going to show you the three prongs using Local Law 1 of 2021 passed by The Village of South Blooming Grove.
Again, I’m not (yet) a lawyer.
I’m supposed to start work on my law degree and MBA in Buffalo this August. So, this is just a lay person’s presentation of the Lemon Test.
Under the "Lemon" test, government can assist religion only if
(1) the primary purpose of the assistance is secular,
(2) the assistance must neither promote nor inhibit religion, and
(3) there is no excessive entanglement between church and state.
Got it?
Cool.
Now let’s look at Local Law 1 of 2021 (LL1)
Prior to this law, the word church was only mentioned four times in the zoning code of South Blooming Grove. Each time it was mentioned, it said in full “church or other place of worship.”
LL1 changes this. First, it explicitly adds language defining a house of worship as a church, synagogue, mosque or other place of religious worship. As told by Orange County, the definition for each house of worship was way too broad and incredibly vague. The Village ignored the County’s guidance.
Second, it then changes the zoning to double the footprint allowed for a home.
Finally, LL1 created specific language for residents to convert their home into a Schul and Shtiebel, granting the Village Board the ability to review and approve these requests. The specifics are almost completely non-existent on how this process would unfold other than empowering the Village to render these decisions. And since the Village Board is now almost entirely Satmar, it’s reasonable to assume requests being made would receive automatic and unquestioned approval. Unless, of course, the request came from members of a different Satmar sect than the ones in charge.
So, let’s look at the Lemon Test’s Three Prongs
(1) the primary purpose of the assistance is secular
-Local Law 1 is anything but secular. The previous Village Code made little mention of religion. Now we have explicit language empowering the Village to grant special permits for House of Worship requests to residents who want to turn all or part of their home into a space for prayer.
Meanwhile, the process for how that process of granting those permits is not at all explained, nor are there definitions provided as to what constitutes a church, mosque, synagogue, or other house of worship.
I very badly want to see the Church of Satan put in an application to the Village just to see what happens.
(2) the assistance must neither promote nor inhibit religion, and …
-The promotion of religion is pretty clear. It’s the intent of this law to specifically allow Satmars in the Haredi community to have their homes, or part of their homes, rezoned as a place of worship.
We know this to be true because there is clear and specific language about converting a home into a Schul or Shtiebel, but no clear or specific language for any other religion, other than that those requests, specifically, would have to go before the planning board.
See the distinction?
Schuls and Shtiebels = Approved by the Village Board
Everything else = Must go before the Planning Board
The Village Board, under this law, is authorized to approve requests for a Schul and Shtiebel. Everything else is treated differently and would likely be denied. Again, because hanhallah decides what does and does not go into a neighborhood of the City of Joel.
(3) there is no excessive entanglement between church and state.
Here we have a Village government empowered to decide what does and does not constitute a prayer space, big or small, through a vague permitting process. That definitely sounds like an excessive entanglement to me.
How about you?
What I’ve explained here is more than enough grounds for a facial legal challenge, because there’s nothing at all that’s Kosher with this law.
But What’s The Remedy?
Honestly, this is a guess. But I would suspect the remedy would be to have the Village of South Blooming Grove dissolved and reincorporated into the Town of Blooming Grove.
Which, is funny, because Keen Equities was created following the failure of a similar lawsuit meant to dissolve the Village to allow for the dissident group to develop the land however they wanted.
But I think that’s where we’re going. Sooner than we all realize.
The Town of Blooming Grove has a ward system, which eliminates the capability of a bloc of voters from dominating the rest of the residents. This would allow for residents who have been discriminated against by hanhallah to have a legal remedy for the harm caused.
So you would effectively kill the bloc vote and get some order here. Sounds like a case worth pursuing to me.
Can’t wait to see this in the news soon …