1996

1996 issues of The Advocate

Interracial couple wins settlement against Nebraska landlords who refused to rent to them

Kristi Kellogg, a white woman from Lincoln, Nebraska, won a $2,000 settlement from Keith Osborn and Pam Lyman, the owners of a rental house in Lincoln, after they refused to rent an apartment to her and her boyfriend, James Greene, who is Black. The Nebr aska Court of Appeals, affirming the decision of a lower court, ordered Osborn and Lyman to pay Kellogg $900 in compensatory damages and $1,197 in attorney's fees. The Court of Appeals also ordered the defendants to pay a $2,000 civil penalty.

Harvard School Desegregation Project links school resegregation & government housing policies

Dismantling Desegregation, The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education, Gary Orfield, Susan E. Eaton and the Harvard Project on School Desegregation, the New Press, $30 (1-56584-305-3). DDC: 370.19

Review by Galen Martin

The beauty of the new book by the Harvard Project on School Desegregation is its unique tie between the increase in efforts to dismantle desegregation and the failure of housing desegregation to keep pace with school desegregation.

Long Beach, CA lender to pay $4 million to settle Justice allegations of race, sex, age discrimination

In early September, just a few months after the Justice Department's landmark $4 million settlement with Fleet Financial, the Department's Division of Civil Rights has again won a multimillion dollar settlement from a mortgage lender to resolve allegation s of illegal discrimination. The California-based Long Beach Mortgage Company has agreed to pay $4 million to settle claims that they discriminated against borrowers on the basis of race, national origin, sex, and age.

Southern California landlord pays $775,000 for discriminating against families and minorities

The Fair Housing Council of Orange County (FHC) settled a family status and racial discrimination lawsuit against Clark Biggers, the owner of four southern California apartment complexes, for $775,000. The August settlement is the largest in the Fair Hou sing Council's 30-year history. FHC filed the suit after uncovering evidence that Biggers discriminated against families with children and minorities.

Florida public housing tenants win security deposits, allows them to choose desegregated housing

The Metro-Dade County Housing Agency, the public housing authority in the Miami, Florida area, has agreed to provide security deposits to 800 families who are being relocated in order to close Larchmont Gardens, Townpark Gardens, and Musa Isle, three publ ic housing projects in Dade County.

The July settlement resolves a complaint filed with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by the Miami-based Florida Justice Institute.

Cincinnati apartment complex agrees to modify buildings for wheelchair accessibility

The first case in Ohio to test the 1988 Fair Housing Act as it applies to accessible housing for people with disabilities has been settled. The owners of a West Chester complex have admitted that their building did not comply with the law and they hav e agreed to make the building and ground floor apartments accessible to tenants using wheelchairs.

Larkspur, CA complex agrees to pay $100,000 for refusing to accommodate disabled woman

The owners and managers of Skylark Apartments, a Larkspur, California apartment complex, agreed to pay $100,000 to settle a claim that resident managers discriminated against a tenant with a mental disability.

Joseph and Eda Pell, the owners of the 454-unit apartment complex; Julia Ellis, the complex's on-site manager; and Cindy Gray, Skylark's property manager, signed the settlement in late June after a federal lawsuit was filed by Joanne Karlsrud and Fair Housing of Marin, a private fair housing group in San Rafael, California.

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