L.A. Housing Bias Suit Settled for $450,000
A $450,000 settlement described as the largest ever reached in a housing discrimination lawsuit in the United States was announced Monday in a case involving a black airline employee who was rejected as a tenant at a Westchester apartment complex.
The suit on behalf of Allan Lopez, now a 28-year-old customer service agent for USAir, and others was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court two years ago against Westchester Investment Co., owners of the 161-unit Belford Park Apartments, and its manager, Gutweiler-Woolley Properties Inc., after Lopez was told he could not share an apartment with a white tenant.
“This is the largest individual housing discrimination settlement in history,” said Patrick O. Patterson, western regional counsel for the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense and Education Fund, at a press conference announcing the settlement. “The amount shows apartment managers and owners that blatant racial discrimination is not only illegal but morally intolerable, and from now on it will also be extremely costly.”
In the past decade, the largest previous settlements in similar cases of racial discrimination had been $375,000 in the Long Island area of New York, Patterson said, and $327,000 in Washington, D.C. A 1982 case over a home purchase discrimination suit in the Chicago area was settled for $122,675, he added.
No previous California case approached those amounts, according to Stephanie Knapik of the Westside Fair Housing Council. She said the largest until now had been a 1987 settlement of $80,000 in a tenant suit on the Westside.
Marcella Brown of the Fair Housing Congress of Southern California said most cases in the region are settled for “under $10,000.”
“I’m very satisfied,” said Lopez, a native of Jamaica who left Los Angeles shortly after his experience in Westchester and now lives in Miami. “I’m not walking around with a chip on my shoulder anymore.”
John Klock, president of the Altadena-based Westchester Investment Co., refused to comment on the case or the settlement. Attempts to reach representatives of Gutweiler-Woolley Properties, which is no longer managing Belford Park, were unsuccessful.
Lopez said he had been living in the United States for seven years in October, 1987, when he answered a notice placed by Robert Beaumont on the employee bulletin board at Pacific Southwest Airlines, where Lopez was working. The ad said Beaumont was looking for someone to share his two-bedroom, $705-a-month apartment.
Beaumont, who is white, said Monday that after his previous roommate, who also was white, had moved out, he wanted to find someone else to share his rent. When Lopez contacted him, Beaumont said, “we got along really well” and decided he could move into the complex, which was 98% white.
But when Lopez started to move in his belongings, the resident managers said he would have to fill out an application, although Beaumont’s previous roommate had not been asked to do so. The managers then rejected Lopez’s application and threatened to evict Beaumont if he allowed Lopez to stay. Beaumont said one manager used a racial epithet while declaring that blacks sometimes “rub me the wrong way.”
The quiet-mannered Lopez said he had lived in mixed neighborhoods in Culver City and the Wilshire area, but had not faced outright discrimination before this. “I’d heard of such confrontations,” he said “but I’d never taken note of it until it hit me in the face.”
Beaumont said he found the Westside Fair Housing Council in the phone book and suggested that Lopez report it. Lopez agreed because, he said, “I had to do something.”
The council sent two white men and Robin Patrick, a black woman, to seek apartments at Belford Park. Patrick was told there were no vacancies but the two white men were told there were units available.
Beaumont, Patrick and the Westside Fair Housing Council joined Lopez as plaintiffs in the suit, filed in February, 1988. Attorneys from the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, a 61-year-old advocacy group which has no current affiliation with the NAACP, represented them.
Beaumont, a 31-year-old television effects coordinator, moved out of the complex. “It got real difficult, having to seek a roommate,” he said, not knowing “how far did this extend? Was an Asian OK? Was an Indian person OK?”
Lopez decided not to stay in the Los Angeles area. “I was kind of scared,” he said. “It was in a lot of papers. I was afraid if I tried to rent an apartment, I wouldn’t get one.” He moved to San Diego, and later to Miami.
Asked why this particular case may have received a larger award, Patterson said he believed one factor was the defense fund’s involvement. “Most cases are handled by private practitioners,” he said. “We’re part of a nationwide organization, and these resources made it possible. In this case, we sued the company that owned the complex, the company that managed the complex and the two resident managers. As a result, we ended up litigating against four law firms. And, all these firms were funded by insurance companies paying the cost of defense. A sole practitioner facing something like this is likely to get buried. It’s very complex, time-consuming litigation.”
In addition, a 1988 amendment to the Federal Fair Housing Act removed the $1,000 limit on punitive damages that could be collected. That ultimately might have affected the amount of an award, Patterson said, had the plaintiffs prevailed in a jury trial.
He added, “We had access to evidence that is often not available.” In addition to management statements made to Beaumont, he said, a Los Angeles police officer living in the complex testified that the managers routinely used racial slurs and told him the owner had requested they keep black tenants out.
In addition to the monetary settlement, the companies also agreed to a series of actions, such as training their employees in fair housing practices and advertising that they do not discriminate. Westchester Investment Co. further agreed that within three years, at least 25% of Belford Park’s 161 apartments would be occupied by at least one black tenant.
