Tenants claim a management company discriminated against renters with Section 8 vouchers in Hyde Park by refusing to rent them apartments at newer lakefront buildings and steering them toward less-desirable properties.
Backed by a fair housing group, they accuse Mac Properties of “systemic” discrimination constituting race-based discrimination as it has a disparate impact on Black renters in Chicago because the vast majority — 89 percent — of Chicago voucher holders are Black.
The federal lawsuit was filed Tuesday by four Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8) holders, along with the HOPE Fair Housing Center, and is seeking class action status.
The renters alleged that Mac Properties lied to them about the availability of units and income requirements needed to steer them away from new or recently renovated lakefront buildings and toward sometimes “filthy” units in older buildings farther from the lake, according to the complaint.
“I was excited about the opportunity to move my family to a more affordable neighborhood closer to the lake and with a good school for my son,” RySheena Moore, one of the renters, said in a news release. “Instead of helping me find a home that fit my needs, the leasing agents kept steering me to older apartments in buildings that didn’t have any amenities. It felt like because I was using a voucher, they thought I didn’t deserve to live in their nicer buildings.”
Mac Properties is the property management arm of the New Jersey-based private equity firm Antheus Capital, and it manages buildings in Chicago, Kansas City and St. Louis, according to the companies’ websites.
Mac Properties owns and manages about 100 buildings with over 5,000 rental units in and around Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, according to the lawsuit. Hyde Park has less than 10,000 total rental units, meaning Mac Properties “dominates and effectively controls this rental market,” the lawsuit claims.
A Mac Properties spokesperson said the allegations of voucher discrimination “are entirely baseless and misrepresent the facts,” adding that the company adheres to all local, state and federal housing laws “without exception.”
“The facts speak for themselves: Of the 5,000 residential units we manage in Hyde Park, hundreds of renters have successfully secured housing using vouchers,” the spokesperson said.
Discriminating against renters based on their source of income, such as government subsidies in the form of housing vouchers, has been illegal in Cook County for over a decade. But this kind of discrimination has only been explicitly prohibited at the state level since the start of last year when the Illinois Human Rights Act was expanded to include source of income as a form of housing discrimination.
The lawsuit cites the Illinois Human Rights Act in charging Mac Properties with discrimination based on race and source of income and also charges it with a violation of the U.S. Fair Housing Act for racial discrimination. Mac Properties’ alleged actions have a “disparate impact” on Black renters, which make up just one third of Chicago renters overall, according to the lawsuit.
“Black renters are 46 times more likely than white renters to be impacted by Mac Properties’ discrimination against voucher holders,” according to the complaint.
Finally, the lawsuit alleges that Mac Properties violated the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act by engaging in unfair, discriminatory business practices.
Beyond the four main plaintiffs in the case, the lawsuit claims that “dozens of renters have experienced and reported Mac Properties’ voucher discrimination throughout the last decade.”
In response to this, the HOPE Fair Housing Center did a “formal fair housing investigation” in which it sent “testers” out to Mac Properties’ buildings to act as prospective tenants and evaluate the company’s practices, according to the complaint.
“Our fair housing testing revealed a clear pattern of discrimination by Mac Properties against voucher holders, which limited access to the units they preferred and consequently to the Hyde Park community,” Michael Chavarria of HOPE Fair Housing Center, said in a news release from the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, one of two groups representing the plaintiffs.
Another Chicago law firm, Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym, is also representing the plaintiffs.
The case’s four main plaintiffs — Moore, Cadeidga Coleman, Janishia Fleming, and Sheliah Ayanwale — each have their own stories alleging discriminatory behavior by the company.
Moore, for example, wanted to live at the Regents Park Apartments on South East End Avenue so that her teenage son could go to Kenwood Academy, and she could benefit from the building’s pool to help with a combat-related disability she has from her time in the U.S. Army, according to the lawsuit. But when Mac Properties staff found out she would be using a voucher to help subsidize the cost of her rent, they allegedly lied to her, refused to allow her to tour the building and, instead, sent her listings for older, low-rise buildings that were farther from the lake and did not have the same amenities, according to the complaint.
When Moore asked a friend of hers to contact the company about an open unit at Regents Park, a Mac Properties leasing agent was allegedly quick to get back to the friend, who did not have a voucher, about scheduling a tour and followed up multiple times, according to the complaint.
Ultimately, Moore had to stay in her previous apartment and put up with a $200 increase in her monthly rent amount, despite efforts to find new housing before her lease was up, the lawsuit alleges.
That runs counter to the Housing Choice Voucher program’s goal of giving low-income families the ability to seek housing in areas of greater opportunity, such as neighborhoods with better schools or buildings with amenities, said MacKenzie Speer, program counsel at Chicago Lawyers’ Committee.
“The history of affordable housing in Chicago is one of intentionally segregating affordable housing opportunities to low-income communities of color, specifically Black communities,” Speer said. “The voucher program is meant to give people choice, mobility, and Hyde Park is a really wonderful, historically important, scenic neighborhood with lots of cultural institutions and resources,” she said.
“It also means you don’t have to move to the predominantly white North side to use your voucher, which can be important for folks who want to stay in a community where their kid, like one of our plaintiffs, (can) go to a more diverse school district.”
Mac Properties has yet to file a formal response to the complaint filed Tuesday.
“Mac Properties stands by the integrity of our leasing practices, and we will vigorously defend ourselves against these unfounded claims in court,” the company’s spokesperson said. “We will not allow our reputation to be tarnished by misinformation.”
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