HUD Charges California Landlord for Discriminating Against Young Family
A San Francisco-area landlord is accused of discriminating against a family with young children, as well as intimidating and harassing them to move into a more expensive apartment.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) filed charges against landlord Melinda Teruel and the Melinda Bautista Teruel 1992 Revocable Trust.
Teruel is charged with violating the Fair Housing Act which prohibits discrimination against families with children under the age of 18.
“The Fair Housing Act protects families from discrimination because of the presence of children or because they are expecting a child,” said HUD’s General Counsel Damon Smith. “This charge should put landlords on notice that HUD takes those protections seriously.”
According to the HUD complaint, the couple, pregnant at the time with their first child, rented a one-bedroom apartment at the Burlingame, California building in 2017.
The complaint states that after Teruel found out the tenant was pregnant, she offered a bigger unit, which the couple declined because they could not afford the higher rent.
After that refusal, the complaint states that Teruel continued to harass the family about moving and stopped by or called at least once a week to ask the tenants to move into the larger, more expensive unit.
The complaint states the harassment increased a few years later, after the landlord learned the tenant was pregnant again. Teruel allegedly pressured to the tenants to vacate the one-bedroom unit, making statements such as “I allowed your family to live here even though you have one child, but now that you will have two, you need to move to another unit” and “a family of [their] size would have a lot of wear and tear on the [one-bedroom] unit.”
The complaint says that after the birth of the second child, Teruel continued to harass the tenants about moving into the bigger apartment. That included suggesting the tenants open a “day care” in the larger apartment to afford the higher rent.
HUD continued to explain that “feeling harassed and at risk of imminent eviction, the family moved out of the apartment.”
A U.S. Administrative Law Judge will hear HUD’s charge, unless any party elects to have the case heard in federal district court. The administrative law judge may award damages to the family, as well as injunctive relief and other equitable relief, to deter further discrimination, if the judge finds that discrimination occurred.