Landlords Settle Suit Over Bias
The owners of a big Buena Park apartment complex settled a lawsuit accusing them of discriminating against African Americans by agreeing to pay $250,000 and give up control of all rental properties for five years.
But Herbert P. and Rose M. Wysard Jr. of Fullerton, after agreeing to the settlement earlier this month, sold the 186-unit Flowertree Apartments. And their lawyer said they own only a few units elsewhere.
Under the settlement, the Wysards must retain a professional firm to manage any rental properties they have or may acquire over the next five years, according to the Fair Housing Council of Orange County, which filed the lawsuit and announced the settlement Monday.
The Wysards did not admit liability in settling claims they wrongly kept African Americans out of the Flowertree. Housing officials said the settlement is the first they know about in the county and possibly in Southern California that requires owners to give up day-to-day control of their properties because of alleged discrimination.
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Although the force of the five-year restriction was blunted by the sale, officials still viewed the settlement as a strong deterrent.
“I think it sends the message that if you intentionally discriminate and you get caught, that it’s not only financially expensive up front, but that it also has a longer-term cost,” said D. Elizabeth Martin, the housing council’s executive director.
The Wysards could not be reached for comment. But Christine Baran, one of the lawyers representing the couple, said: “The threat of attorney fees was what drove the case to settlement. The settlement was not based on the merit of the case itself.”
As part of the settlement, plaintiffs Takisha Spears, who is African American, and Deana Silva and her young child, Charles Bailey, both of whom are African American and Mexican, will receive a total of $100,000 in damages. They lived as roommates in the Flowertree for five months but moved because they felt “unwelcome,” Martin said.
The lawsuit, filed in October 1998, is one of a number of actions housing officials are taking to halt persistent discrimination in the housing market. From the local housing council to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, officials are suing apartment owners and property managers to halt discriminatory practices.
Martin said the tough terms of the Wysard settlement stem from the blatant examples of discrimination provided by, among others, 11 former Flowertree employees.
The lawsuit accuses the Wysards of charging blacks higher security deposits and delaying their rental applications in attempts to exclude them from renting units for more than a decade.
The security deposit of the three plaintiffs, for instance, had been raised to $350 from $250, and their application, which required two days or less to verify, had not been processed for nearly a week. When the prospective tenant checked with her employer, she learned that no calls had been made to confirm employment.
Ex-Workers Support Bias Allegations
The former Flowertree employees gave sworn statements alleging racial discrimination.
One former manager, Michelle Brooks, said that before the Wysards bought the Flowertree, they sold an apartment building in Texas because too many African Americans had moved in. Moreover, the manager said, a previous property management firm had been fired for letting too many blacks move into the Flowertree.
Employees said they were told not to give blacks an application unless asked for one, but they handed whites a form regardless of whether they wanted one. They also were instructed to be pleasant to blacks to allay their suspicions, even though some forms from black applicants were never evaluated. In addition, employees said, Rose Wysard would yell and throw objects at them for showing units to blacks.
Rarely, Martin added, has she found a case with “this much evidence of direct discrimination.”
“We had a lot of evidence, and the evidence was conclusive that this didn’t happen by accident,” Martin said. “The owners knew what they were telling managers to do was illegal, and they chose to discriminate anyway.”
But Baran said other employees had never seen the Wysards engage in or display any discrimination.
“I also spoke to African American tenants there who said that they were never discriminated against,” the defense attorney said.
The housing council, a nonprofit group that contracts with every city in the county to handle fair housing claims, investigates about 800 complaints a year.
Other Cases Pursued in Courts
The Orange County Superior Court case against the Wysards, who also own condominiums and property elsewhere, is one of several that have been brought recently against apartment owners.
Last October, the housing council, on behalf of two former apartment managers, sued landlord Daniel W. Conway of Conway Selective Living apartments in Lake Forest on allegations that he wrongly fired Matt and Michelle Spencer because they refused to follow his demands to stop accepting African Americans and Latinos as tenants.
A month ago, HUD sued Yoder-Shrader Management Co., a Santa Ana property management firm that operates 11 complexes in the county, on 42 incidents of alleged discrimination against minorities and families with children. With each charge carrying a maximum $11,000 civil fine, the case could become the largest of its kind in a decade.
In November 1998, HUD announced a crackdown on housing discrimination across the nation.
“It is disturbing that after 30 years of fair housing enforcement, we still need to fight this fight, but report after report, complaint after complaint, only confirms for us the need for this comprehensive, nationwide audit,” HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo said then.
The agency now is conducting the largest audit ever of housing claims involving racial discrimination.
