FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – March 31, 2022
CLEVELAND, OH – Today, the Fair Housing Center for Rights & Research (The Fair Housing Center), along with six fellow fair housing organizations across the United States (“Plaintiffs”), announces a federal lawsuit against Clover Group and its related entities (“Defendants”), alleging violations of fair housing laws against persons with disabilities. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York Syracuse Division.
During the investigations, The Fair Housing Center and its partners uncovered widespread violations of the federal Fair Housing Act’s accessibility requirements at 38 of the Defendants’ properties in Indiana, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Clover Group operates a number of properties in Northeast Ohio including Lorain Pointe Apartments in Lorain, Parma Senior Village Apartments in Parma, Southpark Square Senior Apartments in Strongsville, and Olmsted Falls Senior Apartments in Olmsted Falls among others and continues construction on Sheldon Square Senior Apartments in Berea. Inaccessible items of concern include, but are not limited to, inaccessible parking spaces, mailboxes, bathrooms, balconies and routes to units and public common use areas. All properties are advertised for individuals 55 years and older and as “Fully handicapped-accessible”.
The Fair Housing Accessibility Guidelines enacted in 1988 require that all multi-family housing, with four or more connected units, built for first occupancy on or after March 13, 1991 be accessible. These Guidelines provide seven technical requirements to ensure compliance.
“Congress passed the Fair Housing Accessibility Guidelines to provide accessible housing opportunities across this nation. It is inexcusable that more than 30 years later, we still encounter newly-built, multi-family housing such as Clover Group’s senior apartments that does not meet these minimum accessibility standards,” stated Kris Keniray, Associate Director of The Fair Housing Center. Given these concerns, The Fair Housing Center partnered with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Fair Housing First program and brought a free, day-long accessible design and construction training to the area in May 2020 to educate local builders, developers, contractors, architects, and officials on the Fair Housing Accessibility Guidelines.
The Fair Housing Center conducted the joint investigation with the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana (Indianapolis, IN); Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Greater Cincinnati, Inc. (Cincinnati, OH); Toledo Fair Housing Center (Toledo, OH); CNY Fair Housing Council, Inc. (Syracuse, NY); Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Buffalo, Inc. (Buffalo, NY); and the Fair Housing Partnership of Greater Pittsburgh, Inc. (Pittsburgh, PA).
The Plaintiffs are represented by Conor Kirchner and Casey Weissman-Vermeulen of CNY Fair Housing, Inc. and Soohyun Choi, Reed Colfax, and Sara Pratt of Relman Colfax PLLC. A copy of the filed complaint can be found online here. This complaint follows another disability discrimination complaint against the Clover Group filed in 2021 in which The Fair Housing Center and several partner organizations identified discriminatory pricing and (charging more for units in more accessible locations) and discriminatory treatment of persons who request accessible parking as a reasonable accommodation (refusing to provide accessible spaces or charging a fee as a condition of receiving an accessible parking space).
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Fair Housing Center for Rights & Research is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to protect fair housing rights, eliminate housing discrimination, and promote integrated communities.
Press Contact: Kris Keniray, Associate Director | E: kkeniray@thehousingcenter.org | C: 216-306-2532
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