The D.C. Attorney General is suing a property management company, accusing the company of violating the city’s Human Rights Act by failing to protect two Black women who say they were harassed by a man who also lived in the apartment building.
In a news release, Attorney General Brian Schwalb said he’s suing UDR, which is listed as the property manager of Waterside Towers Apartments in Southwest D.C.
The two women, according to the lawsuit, were both subjected to race-based and sex-based harassment by Gueorgui Iskrenov, who is white. By failing to address the women’s complaints, UDR allowed Iskrenov “to engage in a monthslong campaign of targeted abuse toward Black female tenants at Waterside Towers,” Schwalb’s office said in a news release.
WTOP has contacted UDR for comment.
Not long after a woman identified in the lawsuit as “Ms. M” moved into the building in 2020, she was in the elevator with Iskrenov and his pit bull. Iskrenov’s dog jumped on Ms. M, according to the lawsuit, and then she tried to leave the elevator but was blocked by Iskrenov. Ms. M “had to force Iskrenov to let her off the elevator,” and then the lawsuit said he called her a series of slurs, including a “Black Lives Matter n-word.”
Ms. M reported the incident, the lawsuit said, but when she asked a UDR employee if they had seen her message, the employee said they’d “get around to it.”
On July 7, 2020, the lawsuit says Iskrenov drove by Ms. M in the apartment building’s parking garage and made a gun gesture with his hand, pointing it at Ms. M when she drove by.
In another instance, also in July 2020, the lawsuit says Iskrenov almost hit a woman identified as “Ms. G” with his car, accelerating toward her while she was crossing in a crosswalk. Then, he rolled down his window, yelled racist slurs at her and then spit in her face, the lawsuit said.
Last February, Iskrenov was found guilty of a hate crime for spitting in the face of a female neighbor, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C.
Alicia Lendon, chief of the civil rights and elder justice section in the D.C. attorney general’s office, said the two woman “repeatedly reported this abuse to UDR, and UDR took no action to protect these women from the persistent harassment that was happening in the building.”
“This type of very persistent, severe discriminatory harassment that these women experienced is just entirely unacceptable,” Lendon said. “UDR’s complete lack of action is unacceptable.”
At least one of the women asked to be moved to a different unit so that Iskrenov wouldn’t know where she lived, but “they never offered her any sort of comparable unit that she could move into,” Lendon said.
The attorney general’s office is alleging that UDR “helped perpetuate and facilitate a hostile housing environment,” Lendon said.
Schwalb’s office believes there could be other Black women who live there that were impacted by the harassment.
“We also believe that UDR interfered with these women’s right to engage and participate in equal housing in the District as compared to non-Black, non-female tenants of that building,” she said.
The lawsuit is seeking financial compensation for the victims, and a court order that would force UDR to “take proper measures to ensure that all tenants can reside in their homes without the threat of this sort of discriminatory harassment,” Lendon said.
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