Lawsuit alleges housing discrimination against families

• Share on
• 
• 
• 
• 

The Elliot on Linwood Avenue, owned by Buffalo Management Group. Photo by I’Jaz Ja’ciel

Fair housing advocates are suing a large apartment manager on claims they’re refusing to rent to families with children — a violation of state and federal laws.

In its lawsuit, Housing Opportunities Made Equal said it sent prospective renters with children to inquire about living in apartment buildings near the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus — The Mayflower at 66 Summer St. and The Elliott at 171-175 Linwood Ave. — owned by Buffalo Management Group. The lawsuit, filed Nov. 14, contends the company ignored phone calls, screened to determine whether the applicants had children, and in some cases refused to rent apartments.

The company’s website lists the two buildings, along with The Bryant at 916 Delaware Ave., as “medical student housing”  with “on-site amenities to make postgraduate life less complicated.”

Rents for the properties in question range from $1,295 for a one-bedroom apartment to $1,585 for a two-bedroom apartment.

According to HOME’s lawsuit, one defendant was told that the management company was “all into young professionals and graduate students” as opposed to large families.

“This is not a case of one bad employee ‘going rogue,’ ” the suit alleges. “Defendants follow a company-wide policy established by Buffalo Management Group owner and manager Myron Robbins, who is actively involved in daily operations, and enforced by employees and agents at all levels of management.”

Neither Robbins nor Jeremy Mitchell, the company’s property manager, responded to a request for comment for this story.

HOME attorney Daniel Corbitt said the lawsuit is based on continued discrimination complaints from Buffalo residents.

“For years and years, we’ve gotten folks in the community coming to us, notifying us about issues with this housing provider, and we’ve just never been able to gather evidence of it,” he said.

Both the Federal Fair Housing Act and New York State Human Rights Law prohibit familial status discrimination, which includes refusing to rent to families with children and advertising that prohibits children.

HOME’s investigation involved using “testers” to apply to live in The Mayflower and The Elliott. Four of the testers were mothers with children and others were singles or married couples without children.

Testers without children were granted apartment viewings and applications, according to the lawsuit. Single mothers were denied viewings and applications for the same units.

Community advocates for years have called out developers and property managers in the medical corridor for the gentrification of the Fruit Belt neighborhood, which has been historically Black since the 1950s. Some neighbors have complained about the medical campus’s impact on parking, rents, and property taxes.

“We know that gentrification and change happens. However, it needs to be smart growth, and having policies from a management company that would exclude people with children is definitely detrimental to growing healthy neighborhoods and diverse neighborhoods,” said Rev. Darius Pridgen, who represented the Fruit Belt when he served on the Common Council. 

Pridgen was an early advocate of the Fruit Belt Community Land Trust, established to create affordable housing and community control of the neighborhoods’ land.

“The Fruit Belt is an area that was definitely family-oriented, and one of the fears that I always had, and that I always pushed against, was development that did not include or who pushed out people who were organically attached to those neighborhoods,” Pridgen told Investigative Post. 

Buffalo Management Group has been operating for more than 30 years and owns and/or manages 28 properties, according to the company’s website. 

HOME in court documents states that those properties translate into “hundreds of rental units” in and around Buffalo. The organization says that Buffalo Management Group’s practices exacerbate issues faced by families who aren’t afforded opportunities to live in desirable neighborhoods.

“Discrimination against families with children increases rates of homelessness. When a person or family experiences homelessness, it can cause irreparable physical, mental, and financial harm,” the lawsuit states.

Corbitt said that HOME intends to make an example out of Buffalo Management Group to discourage other property owners and managers from employing discriminatory practices.

“Hopefully this will send a message and folks will reassess their own policies, their own practices, and make sure that they’re in compliance moving forward, because that’s our goal here,” he said.

I'Jaz Ja'ciel