An expensive text:
Here's the story of a single message that cost a landlord over $8,000.
So I get a call from a landlord (LL) - he's panicking cause he's being sued by a couple after he refused to rent to them. He says they're trying to sue him for $30,000 on human rights grounds, alleging he discriminated against them because they are a gay couple. LL's swearing up and down he's not a homophobe and he didn't refuse them because they were gay etc. He's frantic but I manage to calm him down and we talk about what happened.
He tells me he put a rent ad up on social media and got contacted by a prospective tenant (PT). PT says they are a family looking to rent, their last landlord was selling the house so they had to find a new place to rent. Their conversation went well until LL asked PT to send over some documents (usual proof of identity, proof of employment, pay stubs, past landlord references, all that). Once LL gets those docs, LL starts to vet them. Huge red flags start popping up:
- letter for proof of employment looks like it was made in notepad (no business logo, no contact number, generic name@gmail instead of @business etc.)
- pay stubs are just as bad. like someone googled 'payment receipt' and just typed it up in 5 mins. nothing formal about it.
- LL looks up the business address, its an apartment complex, no business building to be found. Even pays for an incorporation search, but nothing comes up. Can't find the business on google or linkedin, completely invisible.
- PT said it was a family applying, but didnt mention they were a lesbian couple. So LL gets identity docs of two women with two children, all of which have different last names (adopted kids? prior relationships? who knows)
So LL thinks "wait a minute, this isn't a family, these are just roommates! and they forged a bunch of these docs! Their last landlord must have had troubles and is probably evicting them... not worth the trouble."
At this point, LL should have just said that to PT. Or messaged them something like "thanks for sending the docs. unfortunately I am not able to rent to you at this time." The law is you can refuse to rent for no reason, but you cannot refuse to rent for a BAD reason. Tragically, LL decided to message them a bad reason.
LL says something like "oh, i did not realize you are not a family, sorry I only want to rent to a family." (You see, in LL's mind, roommates can split up any time and that can cause problems with collecting rent. A family is less likely to break apart and cause the same kind of problems. So LL wanted to avoid that potential headache.) Human rights law around here says you cannot refuse to rent based on family status. So LL did a no-no right away. But that no-no got turned into an 'oh shit' because the couple took it to mean something else:
PT messages back in a fury: "WHAT? you don't think A LESBIAN COUPLE IS A FAMILY? that is CRUEL and HIGHLY ILLEGAL. I will be suing you at the human rights tribunal! Everything was okay until you saw we were gay! ---"
LL doesn't even have time to respond. PT gets their friends in on it. LL is bombarded on social media by an army of LGBTQ+ allies. Turns into a huge deal. LL does the smart thing and stopped replying fearing it would only make matters worse (rightly so).
Couple days later, LL gets a nasty legal letter in the mail. "From the law office of Lawyer. LGBTQ+ individuals face discrimination every day! You are perpetuating a system of prejudice! Human rights! Pay us $30,000 AND take a course on discrimination selected by us AND pay our legal fees AND explicitly state how inclusive you are in your rental ads! or we'll SUE for even more!"
So after he tells me all this we schedule to connect later in the week and I go check out some recent human rights tribunal cases on discrimination to see how screwed LL is. This was my first human rights matter so I wasn't sure. I find 3-4 cases where the tribunal awarded SUBSTANTIAL damages to the discriminated. Judgement ranged from $15,000 - $45,000 depending on how bad the facts were.
Relatively speaking, his situation wasn't so bad. Some of the caselaw involved landlords locking the tenants out of the unit once they discovered they were gay; one particularly bad one had physically assaulted the tenants. LL's problem was just a misunderstanding and refusal to rent based on family status, nothing to do with PT being lesbians. Bad, but not so bad.
So I explain to him what the likely outcome is based on that research, suggest we engage in negotiation with the other side, and try to settle this matter cheap cause if it goes to a tribunal he could be on the hook for way more. He agrees and ultimately we settle things. The settlement + legal fees ended putting him out of pocket a little over $8k.
So far the most expensive text I've seen.
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