Suit Accuses Landlords of Discrimination : Housing: The filing alleges that managers and owners at more than 3,000 Valley apartments were biased against African Americans.

The owners of more than 3,000 apartment units located mainly in the San Fernando Valley were accused in a class-action lawsuit Monday of discriminating against African Americans and the disabled and harassing white managers who refused to carry out discriminatory orders.

The suit charges that the owners and managers of the buildings refused to rent to a disabled man and instructed managers to reject African American applicants or to charge them higher rents and security deposits. Some blacks were rented only apartments in the back of the buildings, the suit alleges.

The lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by two civil rights law firms and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which characterized it as significant based upon the number of rental properties involved.

“We’ve never had anything this large,” said Diana Bruno, executive director of the San Fernando Valley Fair Housing Council. “The patterns (of discrimination) were so strong.”

The suit names 14 individuals, two partnerships and a corporation. But lawyers who filed the suit said the key defendants are Shashikant Jogani and Sudhir Banker, who own or manage most of the properties.

A manager who works for one of the property management firms named in the suit disputed the allegations, saying the company vehemently opposes housing discrimination.

“I’m shocked because I’ve been told, and everyone I know in the company has said, that discrimination is cause for instant firing,” said Karen Method, manager of Village Pointe Apartments in Northridge.

Village Pointe is managed by Rancho Sierra Development, a Redondo Beach-based partnership headed by Banker. Jogani, who heads Pooja Property Management Corp. in Buena Park, could not be reached for comment.

Banker and Jogani are accused of various types of discrimination that were investigated by several fair housing agencies and civil rights law firms and then consolidated into one class-action lawsuit.

“Through RSD management and Pooja Properties, Jogani and Banker have actually dictated and enforced an illegal policy of systematically denying housing to families and blacks,” said Mercedes Marquez, a partner at Litt & Marquez, a civil rights law firm that participated in the lawsuit.

According to Marquez, part of the investigation was prompted by the complaints of Sandra Moylan, who said she was forced to quit her job as a manager at West Summerwinds Apartments in Lancaster because the management company, Rancho Sierra Development, told her to reject black applicants or at least limit the number of blacks renting apartments.

Marquez said Rancho Sierra cut Moylan’s salary and then threatened to fire her when she continued to rent to qualified black applicants.

Rancho Sierra also reduced the hours of work for Faye Sylvester, another manager at the apartment complex, when she continued to rent to blacks, Marquez said. Later, Sylvester discovered her part-time job being advertised in a newspaper as a full-time position.

Meanwhile, four fair housing councils, including the council for the San Fernando Valley, were in the midst of “undercover audits” on apartment buildings owned by Jogani and Banker to see if black applicants were treated differently than white applicants. The audits were conducted over the past 18 months.

Bruno said that in tests done over the past six months in the Valley, black applicants were asked to pay higher rents or to make higher security deposits. Some black applicants were told no apartments were available but half an hour later apartments were offered to a white applicant with identical qualifications, Bruno said.

The suit also alleges that a man suffering from epilepsy was rejected when he tried to rent one of the units at Walnut Glen Apartments in Van Nuys that is owned by Jogani. The suit alleges that the man was refused simply because his sole source of income was government benefits.

The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount of money to compensate the plaintiffs for trauma and to cover lawyers’ fees. It also asks that the court force the apartment owners to halt further discrimination and require managers to attend training on fair housing laws.