Advocates plan to protest after Berkeley denies housing permit to Mexican family

January 09, 2015 3:00 am • By Lilly Fowler
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Berkeley mayor Theodore Hoskins holds a press conference at city hall in Berkeley on Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2014 about the fatal shooting of Antonio Martin. Berkeley officials says Martin did point a gun at a Berkeley police officer before the officer fatally shot Martin at a Mobil gas station on Dec. 23, 2104. . Photo By David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com
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BERKELEY • The city of Berkeley is bracing itself for protests again.

This time it’s representatives from the Missouri Immigrant and Refugee Advocates and the Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing and Opportunity Council. The groups plan to gather at City Hall at 2:45 p.m. Friday to support local residents who they say were discriminated against when they applied for a permit to live in the city.


Berkeley in December three times denied a Mexican couple and their child an occupancy permit, a document the family needs to live in the home they had planned to rent a few blocks from City Hall.

The city rejected the permit application because the family presented international photo identification instead of U.S.-issued identification, according to David Nehrt-Flores, a Missouri Immigrant and Refugee Advocates organizer.

“This action is both illegal and shameful for a Missouri community,” Nehrt-Flores said in a news release. “Berkeley does not have the right to deny housing documents based on citizenship or immigration status.”

Nehrt-Flores said the final time the family was denied a permit, a Berkeley official said it was because the identification was thought to be inauthentic — not because it was foreign.

In December, the Equal Housing and Opportunity Council filed a fair housing complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In addition, that organization – along with the Missouri Immigrant and Refugee Advocates — sent Berkeley Mayor Theodore Hoskins a letter on Dec. 18.

The Civil Rights Act makes “it unlawful for the City of Berkeley (as a municipal government and recipient of federal funding) to discriminate in the provision of services or make housing unavailable on the basis of national origin,” read the letter.

“As an organization that works to ensure that Missouri communities are welcoming and inclusive places for all residents, we request that you review this matter and respond appropriately.”

After Nehrt-Flores and others confronted him, Hoskins was recently captured on video saying illegal immigrants were not welcomed in the city.

“Until you get, show us, citizenship, don’t come back here applying for an application for occupancy permit,” Hoskins says in the video. “And you can take it all the way to wherever you want to take it.”

Hoskins could not be reached for comment Thursday.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/advocates-plan-to-protest-after-berkeley-denies-housing-permit-to/article_31ac7986-ed77-524b-a0ea-fa5472c73551.html