The U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ) has announced that the owners and former property manager of a federally subsidized apartment complex in Albuquerque, New Mexico have agreed to pay $360,000 to resolve a lawsuit alleging that the former property manager sexually harassed female tenants in violation of the Fair Housing Act.
The department’s lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico in March 2024, alleges that for over 10 years, property manager Ariel Solis Veleta (Solis) sexually harassed female tenants at St. Anthony Plaza Apartments, a Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance property with 160 units in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The suit alleges that Solis’s conduct included making unwelcome sexual comments to female tenants, touching female tenants without their consent, locking female tenants in his office to demand sex acts, and threatening to evict female tenants who did not give in to his sexual demands.
“A home should be a place of refuge, not fear,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kathleen P. Wolfe of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The Justice Department will hold property managers and landlords accountable when they target and exploit vulnerable tenants with sexual harassment.”
The department’s lawsuit also names as defendants the owners and operators of St. Anthony Plaza Apartments, PacifiCap Properties Group LLC, St. Anthony Limited Partnership, PacifiCap Holdings XXXVIII LLC, and PacifiCap Management, Inc. The lawsuit alleges that these defendants are vicariously liable for the sexual harassment of their agent, Solis. The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Inspector General participated in the investigation that uncovered the evidence leading to the lawsuit.
Under the consent decree, which must be approved by the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, the defendants must pay $350,000 to tenants harmed by Solis’s harassment and a $10,000 civil penalty to the U.S. The consent decree permanently bars Solis from contacting tenants harmed by his harassment, permanently bars Solis from managing residential rental properties, and mandates training and the adoption of policies and procedures to prevent future discrimination at residential rental properties owned or managed by defendants.
If you are a victim of sexual harassment by another landlord or property manager or have suffered other forms of housing discrimination, call the USDOJ’s Housing Discrimination Tip Line at 1-800-896-7743, email the Department at fairhousing@usdoj.gov, or submit a report online. More information about the Civil Rights Division and the laws it enforces is available at www.justice.gov/crt.
