Owners of 4 Apartments Face Lawsuit : Housing: Landlords are accused of telling black renters units weren’t available when there were vacancies and of discouraging people with children from renting.

The owners of four Orange County apartment complexes have been named in a class-action lawsuit that alleges the landlords discriminate against blacks and families with children.

In a suit filed with the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, lawyers for three black renters and three families with children allege that the owners of the complexes commonly told black applicants that there were no vacancies when in fact apartments were available.

Similarly, applicants with children were often discouraged from renting, attorney Barry Litt said.

“The most egregious form of discrimination here is that families never get into the apartments to begin with because the methods that are used are designed to keep the families from ever applying,” Litt said at a news conference Tuesday.

“People aren’t given applications. They are told to go somewhere else. They are told you can’t have children on the second floor. They are told we charge a lot more money if you have more than two people. In various ways, they are steered away or absolutely told that you can’t come into this apartment.”

Also, residents already living in the apartments were met with harassment after they had children, said Cliff Dover of the Fair Housing Council of Orange County. “More or less, it would be congratulations on your new child, and the bad news is you’re going to have to move,” Dover said.

The federal Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to refuse to rent to people with children, except in senior housing facilities.

The suit, filed Friday, seeks unspecified damages. It names principal owner Clark B. Biggers; his son, Brian Biggers; plus five other individuals, and two partnerships as defendants. They own and manage the Villa del Sol Apartments and Le Chateau Apartments in Anaheim, the Casa La Brea Apartments in Brea and the Fullerton Palms Apartments in Fullerton, which have a total 366 units.

Clark Biggers on Tuesday afternoon said he had not been served and declined to comment.

“I understand from the news service that it involves discrimination,” Biggers said. “I’m certainly not aware of any discrimination here.”

In March, Cal State Fullerton student Viva Sullivan, who is black, was told over the phone that an apartment was available at the Fullerton Palms, according to the suit. After seeing the two-bedroom apartment, Sullivan wanted to make a deposit but was told by the apartment manager she would accept cash only. Sullivan came back three days later with a cash deposit and was told the apartment was no longer available, the suit alleges.

She had a friend call and discovered the apartment was still vacant, the suit alleges.

“It’s real hurting to have to experience something like this,” Sullivan said in an interview Tuesday. “You’d think things like this are of the past.”

The case culminated from “years of complaints and investigation,” dating back to 1988, Dover said.

“It’s one of the worst (cases), if not the worst, in that it’s a widespread policy covering several complexes,” Dover said.

One plaintiff, Ernest Ofoma, was living at the Villa del Sol with no problem until the birth of his son in January, 1992.

“When we had the baby, they kept doing things to make us move,” Ofoma said in an interview.

The apartment manager told the Ofomas that they could not stay there for long because no children were allowed, according to the suit.

Ofoma’s car was also vandalized, and repeated complaints to Clark Biggers were to no avail, Ofoma said. His family eventually moved.

The Fair Housing Council in early April sent employees to the Fullerton Palms to apply for housing. A black woman applied for an apartment but was told that the unit had been rented. But three days later a white woman sent by the council was told that she could have the same apartment.

The agency also sent an agent to look for an apartment for herself, her husband and her child. She was not allowed to see any apartments because of the child, according to the council. Instead, the manager suggested that she look elsewhere.

Housing discrimination suits are rare in the county, Dover said. Only six cases have been filed in the past five years.