Fair Housing Center joins national housing discrimination lawsuit against Bank of America

6/26/2018

On Tuesday, the Toledo-based Fair Housing Center joined the National Fair Housing Alliance, 18 other fair housing organizations, and two Maryland homeowners in filing a federal housing discrimination lawsuit against Bank of America.

Filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland, the complaint alleges Bank of America and Safeguard Properties Management — the company in charge of maintaining bank-owned properties — deliberately neglected upkeep and marketing of foreclosed homes in working and middle-class African-American and Latino neighborhoods in 37 metropolitan areas, while simultaneously marketing and maintaining homes in predominantly white neighborhoods of comparable wealth.

Michael Marsh, president and CEO of The Fair Housing Center, said Bank of America’s negligence in communities of color undermines the efforts that organizations like the Fair Housing Center and the Lucas County Land Bank have made to stabilize Toledo’s neighborhoods in the wake of the U.S. financial crisis of 2008.

The poor external maintenance of bank-owned homes in neighborhoods of color not only destroys their curb appeal for prospective buyers but also causes a “ripple effect,” by lowering the prices of surrounding houses, Mr. Marsh said.

“We need to get Bank of America to acknowledge there’s a problem and come up with a solution to stabilize this situation,” he said.

A Bank of America representative said that the lawsuit’s allegations are “without merit,” because Bank of America applies “uniform practices to the management and marketing of vacant bank-owned properties across the U.S., regardless of their location.”

The complaint is the result of a multi-year investigation by the National Fair Housing Alliance and its regional fair housing organization partners. In addition to the Toledo Fair Housing Center, Miami Valley Fair Housing Center, of Dayton, and the Fair Housing Center of Rights & Research, of Cleveland, were also involved in the investigation.

Supplemented by 35,000 photographs, the lawsuit claims that fair housing organizations consistently found evidence of neglect in bank-owned houses in African-American and Latino neighborhoods, including overgrown grass and weeds, unsecured doors and windows, damaged steps and handrails, accumulated trash and debris, graffiti, and dead animals decaying in yards. Bank of America-owned homes in predominantly white neighborhoods, on the other hand, were far more likely to be well or adequately maintained, the lawsuit argues.

The NFHA met with Bank of America officials for more than a year starting in June, 2009, offering recommendations to promote fair treatment of its homes in predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods, according to a news release from the Fair Housing Center. Only after seeing no improvement in routine maintenance and marketing of bank-owned homes in communities of color did NFHA begin its investigation.

Contact Adelaide Feibel at afeibel@theblade.com , 419-724-6050, or on Twitter @AddyFeibel.