Fair Housing

After Mayor Donna Deegan and a gaggle of reporters had gone, April Sizemore stood in her cramped apartment that still smelled of mold and suffered all the problems that had caused her to speak out in the first place: the roaches, the rats, the holes in the wall, the water leaks. Barely able to pay the $800 monthly rent, she grimaced at the water flowing from the bathtub tab that a malfunctioning faucet wouldn’t turn off. To Sizemore, it was the sound of money draining from her household finances because she’ll end up paying for the wasted water on her utility bill. “We can’t live like this, and no, I can’t afford anywhere else or otherwise I’d be gone,” Sizemore said. “But as a single mother of two children, I just can’t leave like that.”

A $650,000 settlement has been reached with Lohman Property Management over claims the landlords did not communicate claims for security deposits to their tenants and charged fees that were not part of the contracts the company had with renters. The settlement includes anyone in Florida who entered into a lease agreement for apartments at Eagle Gardens of Jacksonville, Arlington Eagle, Eagle Court, Eagle Landing of Orlando, Eagle Point of Daytona, Eagle Pointe I, Eagle Pointe II, Eagle Ridge, Eagle Summit, Jacksonville Village Apartments, Orlando on the Lake Apartments and Orlando Sky and had any portion of their security deposit retained after they moved out.

Suzanne Garrow could not believe the bold, black and discriminatory words that were published in the back pages of the Florida Times-Union. A classified advertisement toward the bottom of Page D6 on May 24, 2021, sought a “Mature Adult Only!” for a property on the Westside. Garrow, a staff attorney with Jacksonville Area Legal Aid in its fair housing division, recalls seeing the advertisement in the region’s biggest daily newspaper and wondering whether there was a wider problem. That question was answered last week when Jacksonville Area Legal Aid announced a settlement with Gannett Co., the Times-Union’s parent company. The media conglomerate agreed to provide its advertising terms and conditions to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to review and correct any issues identified by the federal agency.

Jacksonville Area Legal Aid settled a charge against Gannett Publishing Co. Inc. after the newspaper chain owner published classified advertisements placed by third parties that were allegedly discriminatory based on race, sex and familial status. Gannett did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Gannett owns The Florida Times-Union and St. Augustine Record in Northeast Florida. The charge JALA filed with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Fair Housing and Opportunity alleged that in Gannett’s online and print media outlets it “makes, prints or publishes notices, statements and advertisements with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling indicating a preference limitation or discrimination based on membership in a protected class” in violation of the federal Fair Housing Act.

Of the 16 lawyers in Florida who have received the Consumer Protection Lawyer of the Year Award from The Florida Bar’s Consumer Protection Law Committee, four either work at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid currently or did at the time they received the award. That is more than any other law firm or government agency in Florida. “The fact that JALA makes up a quarter of that list is truly remarkable,” said JALA President and CEO Jim Kowalski. “It really speaks volumes about the impact of our work and how widely it is recognized within the organized Bar.” JALA’s latest recipient is Adam Thoresen, division chief of Jacksonville Area Legal Aid’s Consumer Advocacy and Litigation Unit, to whom the award was presented June 22 in Boca Raton at The Florida Bar’s annual meeting together with Morgan & Morgan’s John Yanchunis. Thoresen was also the recipient of the National Consumer Law Center’s Rising Star Award in 2021.