The owner of Fountain-bleau Apartments has agreed to pay $116,500 to 15 people identified as victims in a discrimination lawsuit.
Alejandro Miyar, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, which filed the lawsuit, said Fountainbleau officials were discriminating against families with children. Instead of accepting the families, apartment officials directed them to other apartment complexes, Mr. Miyar said.
Officials at Fountainbleau, owned by Clark W. Taylor Inc., also agreed to participate in Fair Housing policy training and pay another $15,000 to the U.S. government as a civil penalty, according to the consent order filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
In 2005, the Justice Department sent "people with similar characteristics except for race or color or familial status" to Fountainbleau, located on Spring Creek Road, to ask about renting two-bedroom units, according to court documents. "Audio recordings of these tests and other evidence obtained by the Justice Department indicated that the defendants discriminated on the basis of familial status."
The Department of Justice filed the lawsuit against the 128-unit apartment complex in April 2006, according to the court consent.
Harry Burnette, a local attorney for Fountainbleau, said the apartment complex owner was trying to cater to residents ages 55 and older and didn't know that his practice of directing families to other complexes was discrimination.
"The bottom line is that our client believed he had a senior living facility," Mr. Burnette said. "The people who were older, who wanted living facilities that didn't have children, he was trying to do them a favor.
"But the government believed that he had not certified that particular apartment unit as a 55 and older apartment complex."
Apartments that are at least 80 percent occupied by people 55 and older can become a senior facility, but the apartment owner cannot reserve unoccupied units if a younger qualified renter comes before them, according to court documents.
Attempts to reach the 15 plaintiffs were unsuccessful. Either the telephone numbers listed for them no longer worked or messages were not returned.
Mr. Taylor is pleased, however, that the case was narrowed to only Fountainbleau Apartments, Mr. Burnette said.
The Department of Justice initially named all six properties that Mr. Taylor owns or had controlling interest in, including at least one other property in Chattanooga, Mr. Burnette said, declining to name the other complexes.
The other dwellings were not named in the court order.
Yolanda Putman has been a reporter at the Times Free Press for 11 years. She covers housing and previously covered education and crime. Yolanda is a Chattanooga native who has a master’s degree in communication from the University of Tennessee and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Alabama State University. She previously worked at the Lima (Ohio) News. She enjoys running, reading and writing and is the mother of one son, Tyreese. She has also ...
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