Rex Parris in the United States

Rex Parris was the Lancaster’s mayor (California).

No, Rex Parris is not what you would call conventional – either as a lawyer or as a politician.
As a lawyer, Parris got a fair amount of publicity for winning a $370 million jury award on behalf of five former Guess? Inc. employees three years ago. As Lancaster’s mayor, though, Parris’s claim to fame – or infamy, some say – is the rhetorical war that he has waged against the low-income, federally subsidized renters who have moved to his high-desert city north of Los Angeles.

Parris is convinced there’s a direct connection between street crime and these Section 8 tenants. Yet, at the same time, he says that the crime rate in Lancaster has plummeted by 40 percent since he became mayor in 2008. How does he explain this? Parris thinks it has a lot to do with the stepped-up and often intrusive compliance checks that were carried out against these households – checks that he personally championed.
Of course, not everyone approves of such tactics. And just last year the NAACP was among several groups that brought a lawsuit against the city, accusing it of harassing minority Section 8 voucher recipients in violation of federal and state anti-discrimination laws. Meanwhile, both the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Housing and Urban Development are investigating the charges, which could end up costing this community millions of dollars in federal grants.

So far, at least, Parris won’t admit to being fazed by any of this. But the city has already spent more than a million dollars on the litigation, and Schlesinger naturally wonders how much more money the city is willing to spend.