When cities receive HUD grants, they must spend them in accordance with Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity laws or potentially lose their HUD funding. The City of Santa Cruz was warned by Regional Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO) Director Charles Hauptman that they had to stop locating their HUD block grant financed housing in low income neighborhoods with unequal opportunities — they could not segregate minority residents in pockets of poverty.

I just received a copy of this letter from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to HUD. Yet Santa Cruz Custodian of Records Nydia Patiño denies this letter exists, although she originally provided me a copy of it in response to a California Public Records Act (CPRA) request about Santa Cruz HUD grants. Regional FHEO Director Hauptman and HUD Regional Community Planning and Development (CPD) Director Maria Cremer addressed this letter to then Mayor Cynthia Mathews. Why hasn't anything changed?

Why would Nydia Patiño deny this letter's existence? Why won't Santa Cruz City Clerk Bren Lehr answer my sister Patricia Colby's question about the existence of this letter? Now I have smoking gun proof the City of Santa Cruz lied about this letter. What are they trying to hide?

I have asked the federal government to investigate this. Santa Cruz will be held responsible for segregating minorities into low income neighborhoods of unequal opportunity.

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