OCW:As I first reported on the Weeklys Navel Gazing news blog, the Fair Housing Council of Orange County (FHCOC) this month won a federal consent decree against the ownership/management of Orange Plaza Apartments. The order, signed by U.S. District Court Judge Beverly Reid OConnell in Los Angeles, is in response to the 2011 experience of Barbara Johnson, an African-American woman who answered a Craigslist ad for a two-bedroom apartment in the city of Orange. After Johnson visited the complex and wanted the unit, management told her it was unavailable. Three days later, she saw a new ad had been placed for the same property, so she contacted the FHCOC, which sent two undercover testers to the complex. A manager told the first tester, an African-American woman, there were no available units. Minutes later, a second tester, this one a white woman, visited and—voila!—was eagerly encouraged to lease a suddenly available unit, according to a 2012 lawsuit filed by FHCOC on Johnsons behalf. Malcolm Jerome Winer, the owner of the complex, admitted no wrongdoing, but to settle the litigation, he agreed to pay $60,000 to the plaintiffs, post conspicuous anti-discrimination notices at the property and attend fair-housing training once a year for two years.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 22:31:13 +0000
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