Two Northwest D.C. apartment complexes discriminated against potential residents by having minimum credit score and income requirements and creating barriers for some people with criminal records and past evictions, according to a lawsuit filed in D.C. Superior Court on Thursday.
The lawsuit, filed by the Equal Rights Center, accuses Air Communities of discriminating against voucher holders and using “overbroad eviction and criminal history screenings,” according to a news release.
Air Communities owns and manages the complexes mentioned in the lawsuit: Latrobe Apartment Homes in Logan Circle and Vaughan Place in McLean Gardens.
WTOP has contacted Air Communities for comment on the lawsuit.
Those forms of discrimination “are a pernicious way to keep low-income D.C. residents, predominantly residents of color, from having real housing choice and housing mobility in the District,” said Joanna Wasik, deputy legal director at Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and co-counsel on the case.
D.C. law, Wasik said, prevents property managers from denying a potential resident because of their source of income, income level or credit score. But, the lawsuit alleges the companies require applicants, including people who have housing vouchers, to have a minimum income and credit score.
The apartments are also accused of discriminating against potential residents with old eviction records. A new D.C. law seals eviction records after three years, but the lawsuit alleges “they won’t take any tenants with an eviction record at all,” Wasik said.
It also accuses the company of discriminating against tenants with arrest and conviction records, but D.C. law prohibits landlords from excluding tenants with convictions that are older than seven years, Wasik said.
“Even then, landlords can only look at certain convictions and take them into account in their decision as to whether or not to rent to someone,” Wasik said.
The Equal Rights Center, Wasik said, used fake applicants to apply to live at the buildings, and learned that “testing revealed that not only are these companies making these discriminatory statements on their website, but actually their policies and practices are to engage in the kind of discrimination that the complaint alleges,” Wasik said.
The consequences of the alleged discrimination are significant, she said.
“They are practices that perpetuate housing segregation in D.C. They perpetuate concentrated areas of poverty with fewer access to resources, and they really undermine the goals of the laws that D.C. has passed to allow more housing mobility and allow more housing choice,” Wasik said.
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