The owners, property managers and agents of a Jamaica apartment building settled with the New York State Division of Human Rights following an investigation stemming from a sign posted in the building’s lobby that called on tenants to “report suspicious activity to ICE,” the division announced Wednesday.
Parsons 88 Realty LLC, which owns the Jamaica building, Zara Realty Holding Corp., which manages the Jamaica building as well as a Hempstead property, and five individuals — Jairaj Sobhraj, Kenneth Sobraj, Rajesh Sobraj, Rudolph Perumal and Tulsieram Singh — must pay the state $55,000, according to a settlement reached with the human rights division in February.
The state announced the settlement Wednesday. The court action was discontinued Aug. 25, based on a stipulation.
In a complaint filed in 2018, the division alleged that the sign displayed in the lobby of the Jamaica building “explicitly enumerates ‘immigration’ as among the suspicious criminal activity that justifies calling the” Homeland Security Investigations tip line.
The sign allegedly violated “protections against national origin discrimination by presupposing that tenants who immigrated to the United States did not have lawful residency status and sending the message that tenants born outside this country were not welcome even if they were law-abiding members of their community,” the division said in a news release Wednesday.
As per the February settlement, all the defendants affiliated with the building “do not admit to any violation of the Human Rights Law.”
“The sign is not racist; it doesn’t threaten eviction or that someone is coming to take people away,” said Adam Leitman Bailey, the current defense attorney for those named in the complaint. Bailey did not represent the defendants during the case and settlement.
“They settled the case at nuisance value just to end it,” he added.
The state Human Rights division learned of the sign in June 2017, according to the complaint. The sign was taken down “on or shortly after June 12, 2017,” the court document said.
“My clients don’t know who put it up,” Bailey said, adding that they control multiple buildings and “can’t control all the actions of everyone.”
As per the settlement, the firms and individuals agreed to “prominently and conspicuously” display a human rights division fair housing poster in a common area, implement a written fair housing policy that will be distributed to tenants in English, Spanish and Bengali, and attend “a minimum of two hours of live or online Fair Housing training,” the court filing said.
Defendants also agreed to “permanently remove any existing and/or future question(s) from their rental applications pertaining to an applicant(s) and/or tenant(s) national origin.”
In a statement issued Wednesday, Human Rights division commissioner Denise M. Miranda said: “It is unacceptable, unconscionable, and illegal for housing providers to discriminate against their tenants simply because of where they are from.”
Nicholas Grasso covers breaking news for Newsday. A Long Island native, he previously worked at several community newspapers and lifestyle magazines based on the East End.