In legal language not often heard beyond war-crimes tribunals, the housing director in Hoboken is suing the mayor over what he claims is a plot of “ethnic cleansing” to rid the city of minorities and replace them with affluent white residents.
It’s part of an increasingly bitter feud between the old political establishment and the administration of first-term Mayor Dawn Zimmer after decades of gentrification.
In his lawsuit, Housing Authority executive director Carmelo Garcia accuses Zimmer of engaging in a political quest to change the economic and racial makeup of the city through a policy he claims is intended to replace blacks, Hispanics and even Italian-Americans with affluent whites.
With rents rising, poor and working-class minorities are being pushed out in what the lawsuit says is “in effect a form of urban ethnic cleansing.”
Zimmer’s attorney called the lawsuit frivolous.