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.
How about this?
How about people stop using brokers to rent apartments?
How about landlords get off their lazy asses and deal directly with potential renters? You can’t discriminate when someone’s looking you in the face… well, you can, but you’d be a really big asshole if you did.
Come on, New York. 10-15% of annual rent for someone to turn a key, and now for someone to discriminate? Ridiculous.
11:38 is correct.
When I was a kid in the late sixties and early seventies, my white parents fought to get fair housing laws enforced. They would apply for apartments posing as a couple with so many kids (sometimes taking me and my sister, or neighbor kids along.) Then a Black couple would go to the building with the same number of kids and economic background. When they would get rejected the whole group would take them to court.
That is why these laws are on the books – to combat rampant discrimination against a group of disenfranchised people.
Of course, lawyers have found a way to pervert these laws to get money out of entitled white folks.
How embarrasing for us all.
“We have a pretty good system here in the US. there are laws. When people feel the law has been violated, they have a right to redress. A judge or a jury determines whether the law was violated. That is what is happening here. ”
No we don’t asshole. The Police Officers who killed Sean Bell was acquitted this morning. Sean Bell was unarmed at the time of the shooting. So how in the fuck can you say “We have a pretty good system here in the US”.
When you punk ass gets robbed and stomped, I hope you say the same things.
The What
Someday this war is gonna end…
BTW This server is fucked up also!
I comment on the headlines, I never read the actual article. Go whites with babies!!!!
I don’t think Brown Harris Stevens did the right thing, but I agree with the person who posted this comment:
“One thing I didn’t get about the article is that when the reporter called the buildings’ owners they claimed that they had never instructed the agency to turn away applicants with kids. OK, so there’s a good chance that this is a total lie. But if the owners were telling the truth: Why in the world would a real estate broker enforce such a policy?”
The brokers would never turn away qualified renters! Who are they kidding? Obviously the landlords instructed them they didn’t want children in the apartments. It’s really easy for the landlords to claim they didn’t tell the realtors to not rent to children. Why didn’t the landlords get investigated too?? By being “tested”? It seems the state only went after the people they’d get the most press over busting, the brokers. It’s so political.
11:30 is correct.
11:30 is correct.
Wow. You guys sure get angry.
The issue is not whether or not you like this couple or like kids or if they were white or rich or poor or whatever. The issue is simple: one of the largest (the largest?) real estate companies in NY was blatantly violating the law.
Worse, they were not just violating the law: they were using fear tactics to violate the law. They were either lying and saying there was lead paint (when there wasn’t) to scare off the parents. or they were protecting landlords who were not following the law regarding lead paint abatement. For anyone counting at home: that’s two laws that may have been broken.
We have a pretty good system here in the US. there are laws. When people feel the law has been violated, they have a right to redress. A judge or a jury determines whether the law was violated. That is what is happening here.