Oh, Baby! Class Action Suit Alleges Broker Discrimination
This morning there are articles in the Times, the Sun, and the Post about a class-action lawsuit alleging that agents from Brown Harris Stevens’ Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights offices discriminated against a couple because they had a kid. The couple, Jamie Katz and Lisa Nocera, started looking to move from Manhattan to Brooklyn in…
This morning there are articles in the Times, the Sun, and the Post about a class-action lawsuit alleging that agents from Brown Harris Stevens’ Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights offices discriminated against a couple because they had a kid. The couple, Jamie Katz and Lisa Nocera, started looking to move from Manhattan to Brooklyn in 2006, when Nocera was pregnant. They found an apartment they wanted to rent in Brooklyn Heights but a broker from Brown Harris Stevens told them they couldn’t rent it because the landlord didn’t want kids in the unit. A year later the couple, who now had a baby, was once again trying to uproot to Brooklyn but were denied a Park Slope rental they wanted because the owner told another Brown Harris Stevens agent that the apartment had lead paint and therefore wasn’t safe for kids. Katz and Nocera are claiming that the refusal to rent to them violated federal, state, and city anti-discrimination laws, which specify that a landlord can’t say he won’t rent to prospective tenants based on “family status.” As the Times article points out, many brokers are unaware—or choose to ignore—the laws. The broker for the Park Slope apartment, for example, allegedly left a voice mail message for the couple saying the following: There was a child there before and … it was just a big, big, big problem and they’re just, they just absolutely are not going to go through that again…They just don’t want to have to deal with it. The suit seeks to ensure that Brown Harris Stevens agents comply with the law, and, if successful, it’ll probably influence the way brokers around the city behave towards would-be renters with children. “The brokers are enabling the discriminatory goals of the landlord,” the lawyer representing the couple told the Post.
Couple’s Suit Accuses Real Estate Firm of Bias Against Children [NY Times]
Real Estate Firm Sued Over Child Discrimination [NY Sun]
Apt. Suit: It’s Bias Vs. Kids [NY Post]
Photo by Lab2112.
12:22, I’m 10:54 and you’re right — what I should have said was “obviously the apartments they were looking at fell within the law that prevents people from discriminating against people with children.” i don’t know the exact details of the law or of the places they tried to rent, i just know the suit wouldn’t even exist if the apartments they looked at weren’t subject to that law (as some early comenters seemed to be saying).
The BH landlord eventually rented the place to another couple with a child. Read the article. The suit is baseless.
i live in a building with kids and have a kid. really, i never hear them and ours does not run around screaming.
the anti-kid culture is bizarre and scary.
12:22 Are you an idiot or do you just like extolling the virtues of your parents? Do you really fail to see that what your parents did is very different than what is being debated? Not renting to an African American couple because of the color of their skin is arbitrary discrimination and there is an unfortunately long history of persecution in this country against African Americans. Not renting to a White couple because the landlord does not want to live in a building, maybe in the apartment directly below or above the baby, is about quality of life.
I used to live below grandparents whose six year grandkid would visit once a week. The f’in kid would run up and down the hallway for hours at a time. It drove us nuts. The kid also broke a window playing with its ball. How does this possibly relate to discrmination against African Americans?
I own a baby and I would never let it live in my brownstone.
I just found out I know this couple and their child – becuase I serve them coffee everyday – and they are far from self-entitled, brat-raising Manhattanites. They are very nice people and their child is SUPREMELY well-behaved.
First of all, Brooklyn Heights landlords are notorious a-holes, it goes with the inbred country club mentality. There’s such demand for property there, that they can reject people based on their jobs! (A friend of mine who was initially acceptable to a co-op when he put down his deposit, was later rejected when they realized he worked for a controversial video game company). Of course, only idiots will actually SAY why they’re rejecting you (and in this case, the brokers were just plain dumb).
But I have a feeling that the real reason wasn’t the baby at all, but the fact that these two seemed like pests from the start; the frivolous lawsuit was just confirmation of what the brokerage and/or landlords had already suspected. When you’re lording over property that’s in high demand, the first thing you do is weed out potential trouble (Specimen A above). I guess i backfired on brokers/owners.
10:54 “Obviously the places they were trying to rent were not in 3-family or less brownstones — if they were, there would be no law suit (lawyers aren’t THAT dumb). Why not read the articles before weighing in so adamantly?”
Why not take your own advice and read the article? It says the first place they wanted was a carriage house and the second was in a brownstone. These both would probably have been 3 family or less.
Lodi, NJ.