Baldwin Gardens Apartments settles housing discrimination complaint

A Baldwin apartment complex has agreed to settle claims it discriminated against potential tenants who asked to use Section 8 housing vouchers to pay rent, according to Long Island Housing Services, which had filed a complaint against the landlord.

Baldwin Gardens Apartments, a 164-unit complex at 2363 Grand Ave., agreed to pay LIHS $15,000, participate in fair housing training and adopt a non-discriminatory policy.

LIHS, a Bohemia-based fair housing agency, said it filed a complaint with the state Division of Human Rights against Baldwin Gardens, Grand Associates Management and two employees following a 2022 investigation.

As part of that investigation, fair housing testers called the landlord posing as prospective tenants and alleged they were told by employees of the property owner on multiple occasions that the complex would not accept Section 8 vouchers.

Randi Gilbert, an attorney who represented Baldwin Gardens in the matter, denied the allegations and said there was no finding her client committed wrongdoing, nor did Baldwin Gardens admit to any wrongdoing as part of the settlement. Gilbert said the apartment complex’s agreement to adopt certain fair housing policies was not an admission that they were not already in place.

Gilbert said Baldwin Gardens settled the complaint to avoid the time and expense of fighting the allegations.

"My client never discriminated, and they always accepted all sources of income," she said. "It was a misunderstanding."

Gilbert described the allegation that employees of the complex told LIHS testers that the building did not accept Section 8 vouchers as "a misstatement someone may have made."

Protections for renters

The federally funded Housing Choice Voucher program, commonly called Section 8, provides rental aid to low-incomes renters, with the size of the subsidy dependent on a person’s income. Tenants pay a portion of their rent, based on their income, and a public housing agency pays the remainder to the landlord.

New York State, Nassau County and Suffolk County all have laws prohibiting discrimination against people using lawful sources of income. In addition to Section 8 housing vouchers, that could include renters using income from unemployment insurance, Social Security Disability programs and other government aid programs.

If renters have enough money including their vouchers to pay rent, landlords cannot refuse to accept money from the housing aid programs, said Ian Wilder, executive director of LIHS. He added that renters with vouchers often have stronger protections against losing that income without sufficient notice than workers do in keeping their jobs.

"The question is ‘Can you pay the rent or not?' ” Wilder said. "Not, ‘How are you paying the rent?' ... It’s a lot harder to lose a voucher than it is a job."

Wilder and LIHS have repeatedly documented cases of source-of-income discrimination on Long Island over the past few years.

In April, a group of five Suffolk County apartment complexes reached a $105,000 settlement with two Long Islanders, LIHS and another nonprofit to settle racial, disability and source of income discrimination claims.

In January, Willow Lake Apartments in Smithtown agreed to pay $19,500 to LIHS to settle claims of discrimination against Section 8 voucher holders.

And last year, LIHS reached a $20,000 settlement with the owners of the apartment complexes Oakwood Manor in Bay Shore and Nu Horizons in Copiague over source of income and disability discrimination claims.

Those are only some of the complaints filed by the nonprofit to the Division of Human Rights, alleging discrimination against people using vouchers to pay rent.

Wilder recommends towns and villages, which are responsible for issuing rental permits, require fair housing education for landlords in the same way the state requires that training for real estate agents and mortgage brokers, he said.

"It’s sad but not surprising because there are no education requirements for landlords like there are for other actors in the real estate world," he said.

The $15,000 would offset the costs of the investigation and support LIHS' future work in fair housing education, outreach and counseling, Wilder said.

By Jonathan LaMantia

jonathan.lamantia@newsday.com@jonlamantia

Jonathan LaMantia covers residential real estate and other business news on Long Island. He previously covered the business of health care for Crain's New York Business.