National Apartment Management Company Entrata Agrees Not to Discriminate

A management firm that administers leases and tenant applications in Washington, D.C. and buildings across the country - including in Baltimore - has agreed in a settlement to evaluate its software and ensure none of its properties discriminate against renters who receive government housing subsidies. The settlement agreement, announced December 12th by the D.C. Office of the Attorney General (DCOAG), Brian L. Schwalb (D), resolves a lawsuit filed by the Equal Rights Center against the owners and managers of the Adams View Apartments, a Ward 3 apartment complex located in Cleveland Park, which offers studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments for rent.

The full settlement agreement is available here.

Low-income renters who receive government assistance are protected against discrimination in D.C. by several laws, including the District’s fair housing legislation. It is against the law to discrimination based on “source of income” for paying with government-backed vouchers rather than money from their own checking accounts.

Earlier in 2023, the ERC filed suit against the owners and managers of the Adams View Apartments (Adams Investment Group, Adams-Cathedral LLC, the Barkan Management Company, Broadhouse Management Group LLC, and Entrata, Inc.) alleging violations of the District’s Human Rights Act and Consumer Protection Act. The ERC alleged that the building and its operators systematically refused to accept voucher-holders as tenants. Defendants in the case have said that they did not use discriminatory practices and, according to the settlement agreement, agreed not to discriminate in the future against any prospective renters on any basis prohibited by federal or local law. 

Lehi, Utah-based Entrata, according to its website, "Offer(s) a wide variety of online tools including websites, mobile apps, payments, lease signing, accounting, and resident management, Entrata® PaaS currently serves more than 20,000 apartment communities nationwide." It runs software that enables landlords and property managers to run more leasing processes digitally, and was formerly known as Property Solutions.

Under the settlement:

(1) Entrata agreed to review and change its practices in jurisdictions where source-of-income discrimination is prohibited - such as Maryland - and hard-encode in its internal operations and documents that housing vouchers are accepted at the properties it represents.

(2) The company further agreed to “undertake a review of the current” operating documents to “ensure that [in no] state that Housing Choice Vouchers, Section 8, or other housing vouchers are not accepted.”

(3) Undergo annual fair housing training for all staff involved in any aspect of the rental process, in addition to regular evaluations to verify ongoing compliance with DC law. 

(4) The defendants also agreed to pay $235,000 to the ERC and the District “for restitution, damages, future training and compliance, attorney’s fees, and civil penalties,” the D.C. attorney general’s office said.

OAG’s civil rights work complements the work of the District’s Office of Human Rights (OHR), which is the primary District agency that investigates individual discrimination complaints. You can file a complaint with OHR at ohr.dc.gov/service/file-discrimination-complaint or call 202-727-4559.

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Read the December 12, 2023 Washington Post article.

Read the December 12, 2023 DCOAG press release.

 D.C. Trails Maryland and Virginia in Civil Rights Efforts to End Qualified Immunity

According to the Institute of Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm and advocacy organization, the Washington, D.C. Council has not yet tried to pass legislation to end qualified immunity, which protects victims - a federal legal doctrine that protects government employees - including when they violate constitutional rights - from lawsuits stemming from a school official strip-searching a student or police officers stealing cash and rare coins. There are currently efforts in the Maryland and Virginia legislatures to enact these protections. 

The reason this is important is that because of qualified immunity it is very difficult to sue government officials when they violate someone's rights. Legally, qualified immunity involves a judge-created two-part test to determine ability to sue: (1) A rights violation has to have occurred, and (2) that violation must be “clearly established” in case law. That basically means you can sue only if you can find another case with the exact same circumstances and where a judge ruled against the government. Because judges can throw out cases without even deciding if a rights violation occurred, this often ends up being a barrier.

The Institute for Justice ranked D.C. as one of the worst jurisdictions in the country for victims of rights abuses, along with Delaware and four other states, with an F grade.  New Mexico leads the nation in state-law redress thanks to the New Mexico Civil Rights Act. Enacted in 2021, that law lets victims sue the employer of any government worker who violates their state constitutional rights and specifically bans the use of “qualified” or “sovereign” immunities. This guarantees that courts have to take rights violations in that state seriously.

Ending qualified immunity does not mean government officials will be punished for good-faith, split-second mistakes. But it would help restore trust and accountability to government officials.

Read the March 4, 2022 Washington Post article.