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DOJ brings sexual harassment case against manager in Alabama
(MONTGOMERY, Ala., July 17, 2008)
-- Responding to an investigation conducted by three Montgomery-based nonprofits, the United States Department of Justice filed a Fair Housing Act lawsuit on Thursday against a property manager in Montgomery for sexual harassment of female tenants, many of whom are in the Section 8 rental voucher program. The lawsuit alleges that Jamarlo GumBayTay engaged in a pattern or practice of making sexual advances towards female tenants, subjecting them to unwanted touching, granting or denying rental services based on response to his sexual advances, and taking adverse action against those who did not comply with his requests for sex. The lawsuit also names as defendants the property owners who hired Mr. GumBayTay to manage their properties.
This case comes on the heels of an earlier federal lawsuit filed against GumBayTay in February 2007 for sexual harassment against a non-Section 8 tenant, Yolanda Boswell. Ms. Boswell’s case, which is set for trial in October, was brought by the ACLU of Alabama, The Central Alabama Fair Housing Center (CAFHC), and Legal Services Alabama (LSA). In that case, which is factually similar to the allegations in the Justice Department’s suit, U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins has already issued a preliminary injunction against GumBayTay. Not long after the Boswell case was filed, the three organizations initiated an investigation in order to discover if any other tenants had been sexually harassed by GumBayTay, and that investigation produced 12 new complaints. After conducting exhaustive interviews and research, the ACLU, CAFHC, and LSA referred the new complaints to the Department of Justice, which conducted its own investigation and elected to file a “pattern or practice” suit.
PRESS RELEASE by the Central Alabama Fair Housing Center
Apartment complex faces fair housing complaint
(TROY, Ohio, July 16, 2008)
-- The Ohio Civil Rights Commission has filed a fair housing complaint against the developers and operators of the 204-unit Towne Park Apartment Homes, claiming the complex's apartments and common areas are not accessible to the disabled.
The action filed in Miami County Common Pleas Court claims an inspection done in November following a complaint by the Miami Valley Fair Housing Center found inaccessible features such as knob-type hardware on front entry doors to ground-floor units and common areas; inaccessible shower stalls in a common area; thresholds exceeding the maximum allowable change in level; and parking spaces exceeding the maximum allowable surface, among others.
The commission said the preliminary investigation showed "it is probable unlawful discriminatory practices have been or are being engaged in." It said conciliation was attempted, but failed to resolve the claims, leading to the court action.
FULL STORY in The Dayton Daily News
Housing commission holds first in series of hearings in Chicago
(CHICAGO, July 15, 2008)
-- Calling Chicago "ground zero" in the debate over housing discrimination, state and federal officials Tuesday kicked off a set of nationwide hearings to address America's fair-housing issues.
Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan welcomed the first regional hearing of the newly formed National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, which focused on equal housing access for minorities and the disabled.
The hearings, scheduled 40 years after the landmark 1968 Fair Housing Act, fall against the backdrop of the foreclosure crisis the attorney general's office has been investigating, Madigan said.
"[The foreclosure crisis] isn't the natural result of a slumping economy, and it isn't the result of homeowners taking on more than they can handle," she said. "This crisis is the direct result of unfair, deceptive and discriminatory lending practices by the lending industry."
Making water a matter of race
(ZANESVILLE, Ohio, July 14, 2008)
-- To this day, Jerry Kennedy only does laundry when it rains. For the first 54 years of his life, he lived without running water, and rainstorms were the only way he could collect enough water to wash his clothes. But Kennedy isn't from some far-off rural outpost. He was born and raised in the Coal Run neighborhood of Zanesville, Ohio — a former coal-mining center of 25,000 in the eastern part of the state — just a few hundred feet from a municipal water line. Kennedy, now 58, is black. His neighbors, who did not have running water for more than 50 years, are also black. On July 10, the U.S. District Court of Ohio awarded them almost $10.9 million, ruling that they had been denied access to public water because of their race.
The decision comes four years after the water started flowing in Coal Run, a black community of some 25 homes in overwhelmingly white Muskingum County, following a lawsuit filed by the Ohio Civil Rights Commission (OCRC) and 67 Coal Run residents. According to the suit, the community had repeatedly requested water service since 1956, the year the city built a water main that ended just short of the neighborhood, and had watched as the East Muskingum Water Authority built new water lines and increased county water efforts in surrounding areas while their requests went unanswered. When he built his house in the early 1980s, Kennedy says, his water request was denied. He can't even remember the number of times he asked the city's service director for help, only to have nothing happen. Then a house went up next door. A white family moved in, and one day Kennedy saw his new neighbors watering their lawn. "They'd be out there with a hot tub out on the porch," he says, "and I was still going down the road [to the local water treatment plant] with a pickup truck every day." Like many Zanesville area residents, he couldn't drill a well because the surrounding coal mines have contaminated the water, rendering it undrinkable. The mines have been closed for years, but the ground is so full of sulfur that residents say the water runs red. In Coal Run, Kennedy and his black neighbors would either pay to have water hauled in from the treatment plant two miles away or catch the rainwater that ran down their gutters.
FULL STORY in Time Magazine
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