A nonprofit organization working for racial equality announced last Thursday it had reached a $165,000 settlement in a housing discrimination case filed against a Mineola landlord and property manager.
The lawsuit filed last August by ERASE Racism and four other plaintiffs charged that Town House Apartments, a 75-unit rental apartment building in Mineola, had discriminated against African Americans in renting apartments.
Elaine Gross, president of ERASE Racism, said the suit was filed after white and African-Americans sent by the Manhattan-based Fair Housing Justice Center to inquire about rental units advertised as being available received different responses on several occasions.
“The white applicants were told there were vacancies. The African American testers were told there were no vacancies for one reason or another,” Gross said.
On one occasion, African-Americans were told there were vacancies in the apartment building at 225 First Street in Mineola, but were quoted much higher apartment rental rates than the whites who inquired at the building, Gross said.
The Fair Housing Justice Center and the African-Americans sent to inquire about the apartments were co-plaintiffs in the suit,.
Gross said her Syosset-based organization had targeted Mineola after conducting demographic research in Nassau County and found that African-Americans comprise 2 percent of the village’s population.
“We undertook an investigation ourselves, which included some demographic analysis,” Gross said.
Efforts to reach building superintendent Jorge Agudelo at the apartment for comment were unavailing.
The people sent in by Fair House Justice Center taped their conversations with Agudelo, Gross said.
Gross said the settlement, which signed on June 12 by United States Magistrate Judge Gary R. Brown, requires the building owner, LLR Realty LLC, to have its building superintendent and other employees at the Town House Apartments trained in showing and renting apartments.
She said the training will be done by person designated by ERASE Racism or the Fair Housing Center.
ERASE Racism also reported the settlement will give it access to record keeping of documents such as rental applications and denials “to help ensure compliance” until 2017.
Apartment vacancies must be advertised to the public through www.craigslist.com in a non-discriminatory manner as part of the settlement. The settlement also requires that HUD Equal Housing Opportunity notices are posted at the property and visibly rendered on all rental applications.
“All people should have the ability to housing choice that they can afford. They should not be kept out because of race or religion,” Gross said. “This is very important also because children are relegated to racially segregated communities. Because of the way school segregation works, parents send their children to schools that have fewer opportunities and higher needs.”
The Mineola case is the latest of several recent housing discrimination cases in Nassau County.
Two fair housing agencies recently filed a federal lawsuit against the Village of Great Neck Plaza and the Nassau County Industrial Development Agency for allegedly restricting access to affordable housing to African-Americans.
The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the Town of Oyster Bay in April over alleged discrimination in the town’s affordable housing programs.
And U.S. District Judge Arthur D. Spatt ruled in December that a Garden City zoning ordinance discriminated against minority residents.
