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The Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana and Marckus Williams, an Indianapolis resident, have filed a lawsuit against Orange County, California-based Tricon Residential Inc. alleging that the company’s blanket ban on renting to those with prior felony convictions and eviction filings constitutes racial discrimination.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, seeks class-action status.
Tricon owns 40,000 single-family homes across 10 states and is one of the largest providers of single-family rental homes in the country, according to the Fair Housing Center. The company lists dozens of homes for rent throughout central Indiana on its web site.
Williams applied to live in a home in Indianapolis with his wife and young child. He was denied, with documents from Tricon citing three prior felony drug convictions on Williams’ record. Two of the listed convictions had been expunged, while the the other cited by Tricon was a record of Williams’ participation in a court-ordered program rather than a conviction.
Williams, one of two neighborhood leaders who were initially tapped to run a food-desert-filling grocery store, represents the class of Black renters who are automatically excluded from renting the properties Tricon owns across the country due to prior convictions. The Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana found that the company has screened for criminal records over the past seven years.
The proportion of Black people disqualified by Tricon’s blanket ban on renting to people with any felony convictions within the past seven years is 5.32 times greater than the proportion of white people disqualified, according to the Fair Housing Center.
Additionally, the Fair Housing Center alleges that the automatic disqualification of renters with an eviction filing within the past two years—including evictions who were expunged or ultimately not carried out—is racially discriminatory. That policy has an impact especially on Black women, the complaint alleges.
“Black female renters without children are threatened with eviction at about 6.8 times the rate at which white female renters without children are threatened with eviction,” attorneys for the Fair Housing Center wrote. “Disparities persist for Black women with children, who are threatened with eviction at about 4.3 times the rate of white female renters with children.”
Attorneys write that for both policies, simply looking at renter applications and evaluating each one individually would satisfy discrimination concerns.
A representative for Tricon Residential did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Washington, D.C.-based civil rights law firm Relman Colfax is representing the plaintiffs in the case. Ellora Israni, an attorney with the firm, said in a press release that the class action lawsuit is “about holding housing providers accountable to ensure everyone has equal access to housing regardless of their background. For those affected, this is not just a theoretical issue—it’s about real lives, families and communities marginalized through no fault of their own.”
The suit seeks to prevent Tricon Residential from continuing to implement these policies, along with damages and attorney’s fees for the plaintiffs.
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