A second former employee of Clover Group has filed a federal lawsuit in Buffalo that essentially repeats allegations first made in litigation filed last month: that the Lancaster-based real estate development company and its executives refuse to build senior housing in neighborhoods with significant Black populations.
R. Shane Forrest, a former development director for Clover in North Carolina, filed the second lawsuit.
“Defendant Clover Entities’ unwritten site selection criteria are illegal and rely upon the percentage of Black people living within both a three-mile radius and a five-mile radius of a proposed site to determine whether the site is suitable for Clover Entities’ purposes,” the new lawsuit charges. “Defendant Clover Entities’ executives and employees referred to the percentage of Black people living within a three-mile radius and a five-mile radius of a proposed site as the ‘Canadian Factor’.”
That’s just what Peter C. Rizzo, a former Clover development director in Buffalo, charged in his legal action. But Rizzo’s case offers something that Forrest’s doesn’t: quotes from recordings of Clover executives discussing “the Canadian Factor.”
Forrest’s lawsuit said he was never told an acceptable percentage for the Black population of a prospective Clover development site, “but was instead instructed to avoid Black areas altogether.”
Proof of Clover’s racist policies can be found in its track record, the new lawsuit also charges. It notes that the average Black population within a three-mile radius of Clover’s 48 market-rate senior properties is just 6.77% – which is less than half the rate of the Black population nationally.
The lawsuit also says that at a meeting last June, Clover Vice President Richard Greenspan said the company had opted against developing properties in Maryland because its “Canadian” population is too high.
And on another occasion, the lawsuit says, Clover Executive Vice President Emily…
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