Housing Discrimination

Ensuring Fair Housing Rights for all.

Your landlord or condominium association denies your request for a handrail or emotional support animal. The bank comes back with a suspiciously low appraisal of your house’s value because you live in a majority-Black neighborhood. Your apartment application is denied because you’re a single mother, or the rental agent “kindly” suggests that you would probably find the apartment complex in the next town over more suitable for your family. The town planning board rejects your application to open a sober living home.

Every year, thousands of Michiganders face housing discrimination despite federal and state Fair Housing laws that forbid discrimination in the terms, privileges, and conditions of housing because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, or disability.

Our law firm leads Michigan in bringing lawsuits to vindicate Fair Housing rights and partners with the Fair Housing enforcement agencies across the state in their important work.

Results for our clients:

  • $325,000 settlement from an apartment complex that evicted individuals who were participating in a substance use disorder treatment program.

  • $100,000 and multi-year compliance testing against a large apartment complex that steered renters below the age of 35 away from their building.

  • $75,000 to an individual with a mental health disability whose apartment application was rejected.

  • $60,000 and multi-year compliance testing to a large apartment management company that advertised an occupancy policy that had a discriminatory effect on families with children.

  • $40,000 and mandatory Fair Housing training against an all-white condominium board that refused a Black couple’s request to install a handrail on their front porch.

Contact Our Team

Even before you talk to an attorney, it’s important to gather information and understand your rights:

  • Contact your regional Fair Housing Center to speak with one of their trained professionals who can help you understand your rights.

  • Make a complaint to your landlord, condominium board, or property management company; give them a chance to rectify the situation.

  • Keep a journal documenting what the landlord, condominium board, housing lender or appraiser, property management company, or other bad actor says and does regarding their discrimination.

  • Maintain a record of all letters, emails, voicemails, text messages, and other communications that may be important evidence of the discrimination.

Robin Wagner developed our Fair Housing practice in her first days with us and has published and spoken widely on this area of law. Now she and Jennifer Lord represent cases large and small across the state, in federal and state court as well as before administrative agencies to vindicate the rights of people who have fallen victim to unlawful housing discrimination.