Overview
On October 8, 2024, Cohen Milstein, in alliance with Inner City Law Center and Handley Farah & Anderson PLLC represents Housing Rights Initiative (HRI) in what appears to be the largest housing discrimination action in California’s history against 203 real estate agents, brokerage firms and landlords for illegally discriminating against families with Housing Choice Vouchers (“Section 8 vouchers”).
The 112 induvial complaints were filed en masse by HRI, a housing watchdog group, with the California Civil Rights Department. The 203 defendants include some of the largest real estate companies in the country: Coldwell Banker, EXP Realty, Sotheby’s International Realty, and RE/MAX.
This mass filing is a result of a historic undercover investigation conducted by HRI, which found rampant discrimination & clear violations of the law by real estate companies against families with Housing Choice Vouchers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose.
Case Background
In 2019, Governor Newsom signed Senate Bill 329, which made it illegal for landlords and brokers to discriminate against tenants with housing vouchers. However, it was suspected that landlords, real estate agents, and brokers across the state were not in compliance.
Over the course of a year, HRI trained, equipped, and deployed an army of undercover investigators, who posed as prospective tenants with Section 8 vouchers. These investigators contacted hundreds of brokers and landlords by text message to determine compliance with California’s fair housing laws. For completed tests, HRI found that voucher holders were explicitly discriminated against 44% of the time in San Francisco, 53% of the time in Oakland, 58% of the time in San Jose, and a whopping 70% of the time in Los Angeles.
Below are just a few examples of the alleged discrimination HRI uncovered during the course of its investigation:
The complaints allege that a broker at EXP Realty, which is one of the largest brokerage firms in the county, illegally discriminated against one of HRI’s undercover investigators:
The complaints allege that a broker at Sotheby’s International Realty, a leading multinational real estate company, illegally rejected the voucher of one of HRI’s testers:
The full list of alleged violators and screenshots of the discriminatory and illegal conduct broken down by city can be found here: Evidence of Discrimination
The goal of these filings is to get the real estate companies to stop their discriminatory housing practices and exacerbating California’s homelessness and affordable housing crisis.
Furthermore, the result of HRI’s investigation underscores the need for proactive and systematic enforcement to combat housing discrimination and for the State of California to provide adequate funding for the California Civil Rights Department to meet the scale of the problem.