Bernard Healy

Bernard Healy (1856 – October 22, 1916) was a Los Angeles City Council member who was known for his attempt in 1905 to legislate against landlords who refused to rent to families with children, for his support of paid holidays for city workers in the parks and streets departments, and for his large family.

Healy was born in Wheeling, West Virginia and was married in Arizona about 1880, becoming the father of eight to ten children, including a set of twins.

"[1][2] Healy was a City Council member between 1904 and 1909,[3] when he was described as a "kindly, good-natured man of large family and patriotic impulses.

[7] He also authored an ordinance, adopted unanimously, that made it unlawful to grant a saloon license anywhere within 600 feet of a public school building.

We've got enough ordinances on our books to run a half a dozen States, but there isn't one of them for the man of the common people with a modest salary who is trying to raise a family that will be a credit to the community.

The councilman then amended his proposal to instead simply set a higher license fee on landlords who bar children,[11] an exclusionary practice, he said, that placed "a premium on race suicide, and I'm going to fight it.

[3][13] Afterward, in an article examining what the outgoing City Council members would do since "they lost their salaries of $100 a month and perquisites," the Los Angeles Herald said that "Barney Healy's income .

Healy's faults did not include niggardliness, and no tale of hard luck ever failed to reach his pocketbook.

Healey as seen by a Los Angeles Times artist.
Healy and his twins in 1907.