Baldwin housing discrimination case results in local brokerage firm, real estate agent and landlord being ordered to pay $16,500 fine

A Baldwin residential brokerage, a real estate agent and a landlord have been ordered to pay a combined $16,500 in fines by the state Division of Human Rights over a complaint of alleged housing discrimination, the agency announced Wednesday.

New Image Realty Corp.; Mark Abramson, a longtime real estate agent with the firm; and Leigh Koch, a former landlord of a two-family home in Oceanside, have all been ordered to pay fines to the division following a 2019 incident involving alleged discrimination against a group of prospective tenants “based on their skin color and their lawful source of income,” the human rights group said in a news release Wednesday.

The landlord was ordered to pay $10,000, while New Image Realty was fined $4,500, and Abramson was ordered to pay $2,000.

Officials with New Image Realty did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Abramson told Newsday Wednesday he felt that the ruling “was very unjust" and did not reflect his previous years of work assisting Long Islanders from all backgrounds in finding housing.

Warren S. Dank, an attorney for the former landlord, said in a statement that his client has “continuously denied the allegations that he engaged in any unlawful discrimination against a tenant based on their skin color and their lawful source of income.”

According to the division, a representative of the Melillo Center, a mental health nonprofit that has since been acquired by CEC Health Care, reached out to Abramson in the fall of 2019 to inquire about a second story apartment at a home owned by Koch at the time.

Abramson, who soon after showed the property to a “Caucasian” representative from Melillo, “pointed to his hand” and asked if the prospective tenants the nonprofit was representing were “like us,” according to legal documents provided by the division.

The representative told Abramson he was “not allowed to ask such questions” and did not disclose the potential tenants’ race, according to the division.

 According to the legal documents, after the November showing, the Melillo representative sent along detailed information on the housing subsidy program the nonprofit would be using to pay the prospective tenants’ rent. The following day Abramson is said to have sent along the information to then-client Koch.

The documents said the two had a phone conversation on Nov. 14 in which Abramson says Koch told him that he did not want to work with tenants using special subsidies or vouchers. On Nov.15, the Melillo representative followed up with Abramson, asking whether the landlord was interested in moving forward and was told, “No, the landlord is not accepting your program,” according to the documents.

Under New York State law, it is unlawful to deny housing opportunities based on someone’s legal source of income, whether it be Social Security, alimony payments or housing vouchers and subsidies, said Ian Wilder, executive director of Long Island Housing Services.

Abramson told Newsday Wednesday that “The [Melillo] representative was not hurt in any way, and the person applying for the apartment never saw it and wasn’t hurt monetarily at all.”

“Even after the allegations occurred … I still continued to follow up and tried to help [Melillo] with the client that they had,” Abramson said. He added that he helped Melillo clients after the incident find housing.

Asked about his inquiry into the race of the potential tenants, Abramson said, “It was a regrettable situation,” adding that both he and New Image have “helped many, many people that are minorities” over his career.

Koch’s attorney, Dank, said in a statement that his client “relied solely upon the actions of his real estate agent and real estate brokerage firm concerning renting an apartment at his property.”

“Mr. Koch also refused to settle with the NYS Division of Human Rights for $50,000.00 and decided to have the case adjudicated on the merits,” Dank's statement said. .  “The Decision and Order only assessed a civil fine and penalty against Mr. Koch in the sum of $10,000.00, an amount far less than the State wanted to obtain from Mr. Koch, evidencing the lack of direct evidence.”

Wilder, whose organization investigates housing discrimination on Long Island, said discrimination based on income, race and disability remain major problems locally and across the country.

“It’s a prevalent across the country, and it's prevalent here, very much so,” Wilder said. “Our biggest problem is that we don’t have a sufficient number of people to reach all the people who are suffering from it.”

Wilder said income discrimination remains one of the biggest obstacles to getting Long Islanders the housing they need.

“We do see a lot of explicit income discrimination even among real estate agents who should know better at this point,” said Wilder, adding that while a state law governing lawful income discrimination went into effect  in 2018, Nassau County has had a law on the books for a decade.