Subsidized Bigotry

The Attorney General's Office has the right to make spot checks of the record, but Passwater says she doubts the settlement will end racism at Fellowship Towers. More than a year--the usual waiting period--has passed since John Lee filed his application, she points out, yet he is not among the half-dozen new residents announced since the settlement took effect.

Lee, now 75, still lives in a housing project in South Phoenix, in a neighborhood swallowed by drugs and random violence. His apartment, separated from the street by a tall iron fence, is a few blocks from the home where unknown assailants recently fired a shotgun into a bedroom window, blasting away the eye of a little girl sleeping inside.

"IT'S TIME FOR THEM to just move on down the road," says Lee Bacan of Pratt and the Passwaters. A Fellowship Towers resident, Bacan is a self- described ardent Odd Fellows member. "They're undesirables, in my opinion." But, he adds, "I will tell you something pertinent to this thing that there's never been a black person living here. I don't think they're acting with good judgment to force the Odd Fellows and Rebekahs to have blacks in here.

"If I'm honest and you're honest and the Passwaters are honest with themselves, we'd all agree that every time blacks start moving in, it will ruin the place," Bacan says. "Whenever you have a concentration of blacks come in, you've got problems. Drugs, domestic problems, teen pregnancy."

"Sure, the Odd Fellows and Rebekahs don't want 'em here," he says. "It's not a written policy, we just don't want garbage up here."