Ex-Managers Accuse Landlord of Racial Bias

With rare written evidence in hand, two former apartment complex managers accused their one-time employer in a lawsuit Friday of wrongly firing them because they refused to stop accepting African Americans and Latinos as tenants.

The managers, Matt and Michelle Spencer, contend in their federal lawsuit that landlord Daniel W. Conway engaged in housing discrimination at his Conway Selective Living Apartments in Lake Forest.

They also allege that Conway hit Michelle Spencer in the jaw after firing the couple and that he improperly evicted them because they refused to comply with his instructions.

Conway did not return calls Friday to his home and office.

The lawsuit was filed after the Fair Housing Council of Orange County, alerted by tenants at the complex, started working with the Spencers to gather information. The council decided to take on the case.

The council’s lawyer, D. Elizabeth Martin, who also represents the Spencers, said she was shocked when she saw the letter. “It’s pretty blatant,” she said.

In July 1998, Conway sent a six-page letter to the Spencers, telling them that the previous owner “had lower type tenants that I want to grow out of,” the lawsuit states. The letter, which was attached to the suit as an exhibit, went on to criticize them for accepting an African American family.

Conway wrote: “We will never have AA tenants until my onsite managers stop accepting blacks and mexicans. You are expected to bring in top flite tenants. . . . I will accept nothing less.”

Civil rights attorneys say they have not come across such a letter in years.

“People, even when they do want to discriminate, don’t put it in writing,” said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “It’s hard to believe that in 1999, anybody would write a letter like this.”

The couple said they were fired after disclosing the letter to an African American family fighting eviction.

The letter, Martin contends, also details how far Conway was willing to go to avoid renting to minorities.

“Ask your list of questions. Write down the answers on a tablet. Pin them together and place them in a special file,” Conway wrote. “You have not turned them down. You have lived up to the law. You have given them every opportunity.”

His direction appeared straightforward: “No more blacks and no more mexicans are my instructions to you.”

Conway bought the apartments on Packer Place in early 1998 with his life’s earnings, he wrote, and “will not have that lifetime thrown away by INATTENTION!!!”

The Spencers said they were hired in May 1998 to manage the complex in exchange for rent and utilities payments. Initially, Conway told the Spencers they were “keepers, as in a litter of pups when you decide which one you keep,” said Michelle Spencer, 24.

The Spencers allege that Conway told them to put a star by the names of white applicants and gather evidence that might warrant evictions against minority tenants, such as one-day-late payments.

“He felt comfortable expressing his racism,” said Fernando Olguin, another attorney for the Spencers.

The lawsuit seeks an order barring Conway from discriminating against minorities, along with unspecified damages and attorney fees.

Martin said that while the couple did not directly suffer discrimination, they were harassed “for refusing to go along with the landlord’s insistence that they discriminate.”

“Under the Fair Housing Act, that’s a violation,” Martin said.