Gresham v. Windrush Partners, Ltd.

730 F.2d 1417
Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit·Decided April 27, 1984·No. No. 83-8504·Published·Cited by 62 cases

Opinion

TUTTLE, Senior Circuit Judge:

In this appeal we are asked to determine the propriety of a preliminary injunction that, in essence, requires defendants-appellants, who are the developers and managers of a large apartment complex in Decatur, Georgia, known as Windrush Apartments, to conform to the requirements of various fair housing laws. For the reasons stated herein we affirm entry of the preliminary injunction, with the minor modifications set forth below.

I. BACKGROUND

We set forth the facts in this case in detail, largely as they were found by the district court. On January 31, 1983, plaintiff-appellee Derrean Gresham, a black female, called the rental office at Windrush Apartments, a federally subsidized residential complex in Decatur, Georgia, to ask whether applications were being accepted for two bedroom, “Section 8” apartments.1 Defendant-appellant Tena McGill, the resident manager at Windrush, answered Gresham’s call, told Gresham that she was too busy to talk right then, and told Gresham to call back later. Gresham called again later in the day and received a similar response from McGill. Gresham then told McGill that she would come in person to fill out an application.

At noon that same day Gresham went to the leasing office, accompanied by three other persons, all of whom were black. McGill offered all of them, including Gresham, applications for apartments at Windrush. Gresham and Carolyn Smith, one of the individuals with Gresham, asked whether one and two bedroom units were available under the Section 8 program. McGill said that such units were available. She did not offer to show them around the complex.

While at the leasing office Smith sought to apply for a one bedroom Section 8 apartment but was informed by McGill, after partially completing her application form, that the only one bedroom units still available were reserved for handicapped individuals. Gresham sought to apply for a two bedroom unit, after asking McGill whether that was an appropriate size for a mother and two children. McGill told Gresham that her employment and income had to be verified by her employer prior to qualification for a subsidized apartment. McGill also told Gresham that she would have to submit her children’s birth certificates, but McGill did not tell Gresham when to provide them. McGill did not offer to calculate the amount that Gresham’s Section 8 rent would be at Windrush Apartments. [1419] McGill suggested that Gresham call if she did not receive notification regarding the status of her application within the following two weeks. On the next day, February 1, 1983, McGill mailed an employment verification form to Gresham’s employer, the Stadium Hotel in Atlanta.

During the following two weeks, Gresham telephoned McGill several times to ask about the status of her application. McGill always replied that the processing was not completed and that she was waiting for information to be returned through the mail.

On February 17, 1983, Gresham once again called the rental office and asked whether she could do anything else to expedite her qualification for Section 8 housing. McGill told her that copies of the birth certificates of her children were needed for her file and that Gresham could bring them into the office. The two also discussed some missing forms — Gresham understood that her entire application had been lost, but McGill claims she told Gresham that only the employment verification form had been misplaced.

Gresham, under the impression that defendants had lost her rental application, went to the rental office that same day to complete another application. When Gresham arrived at the rental office, McGill informed her that she had found the application, but that now she needed birth certificates for Gresham and her two children, the telephone number of Gresham’s previous resident manager, and one more employment verification form from her employer. Deviating from Windrush’s ordinary procedure, McGill gave Gresham the employment verification form to hand-carry to her employer. McGill advised Gresham, however, that the form had to be mailed in by her employer, not by Gresham. Gresham returned to the rental office later that afternoon to deliver the birth certificates and other information to McGill.

Gresham testified that when she returned with the birth certificates, McGill told her that the office’s photocopying machine had broken down and that she could bring them back later. To facilitate the long-delayed completion of her application, however, Gresham told McGill to keep the birth certificates and that she would pick them up later. According to McGill, the photocopying machine was inoperable on that day because the rental office had just been moved from its previous location in the apartment model to the apartment clubhouse. At that time a proper electrical outlet for the machine had not yet been installed in the new rental office and McGill was unable to make copies of Gresham’s children’s birth certificates. Although McGill testified that she apologized for the apparent loss of the employment verification form, Gresham stated that she received no such apology. That same day the original employment verification form from Gresham’s employer arrived in the mail in an envelope postmarked February 15, 1983. Apparently, the form had not been lost after all.

At about the same time in February, McGill became aware that there were ten applicants who had completed the required processing and were qualified for Section 8 two bedroom units, but that there were only five Section 8 two bedroom units available. McGill, who had no previous Section 8 housing experience, requested that her supervisor, Loretta Smith, who had experience with rental of Section 8 housing, select five persons or families for immediate tenancy in the available two bedroom Section 8 units.

Smith explained the selection procedure at the preliminary injunction hearing, stating that after Windrush had received more applications than it had apartments in each category of Section 8 units — one, two, and three bedroom apartments — she reviewed all of the applications and other documents in each applicant’s file, none of which indicated the applicant’s race. She then selected for immediate occupancy the tenants who appeared to have the most favorable rental histories and credit references. After the initial tenants were selected, Smith created waiting lists for each category and sent “waiting list letters” to persons whose [1420] applications showed probable financial qualification for Section 8 assistance and whose verification forms had been received. Smith also sent waiting list letters to persons for whom employment verification forms or credit references had not been received, if those applicants appeared likely to qualify in view of the information available.

Applicants were placed on the waiting list in chronological order based on the initial date of submission of each application. Smith testified, however, that when a Section 8 unit becomes available in the future, she may select not the next applicant on the list, but the applicant whose rental history and credit references make the latter a “more acceptable” tenant.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Gresham v. Windrush Partners, Ltd., 730 F.2d 1417 (11th Cir. 1984).

730 F.2d 1417 (Gresham v. Windrush Partners, Ltd.) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

Related

Project Sentinel v. Komar
E.D. California, 2021
Alcaraz v. KMF Oakland LLC
N.D. California, 2019
Step by Step, Inc. v. City of Ogdensburg
176 F. Supp. 3d 112 (N.D. New York, 2016)
Granger v. Auto-Owners Ins. (Slip Opinion)
2015 Ohio 3279 (Ohio Supreme Court, 2015)
R.W. v. Board of Regents of University System of Georgia
114 F. Supp. 3d 1260 (N.D. Georgia, 2015)
Daveri Development Group, LLC v. Village of Wheeling
934 F. Supp. 2d 987 (N.D. Illinois, 2013)
United States v. Ocala Live Stock Market, Inc.
861 F. Supp. 2d 1328 (M.D. Florida, 2012)
LaFlamme v. New Horizons, Inc.
514 F. Supp. 2d 250 (D. Connecticut, 2007)
United States v. Matusoff Rental Co.
494 F. Supp. 2d 740 (S.D. Ohio, 2007)
United States v. Edward Rose & Sons
246 F. Supp. 2d 744 (E.D. Michigan, 2003)
United States v. Colonial Pipeline Co., Inc.
242 F. Supp. 2d 1365 (N.D. Georgia, 2002)
Pathways Psychosocial v. Town of Leonardtown, MD
223 F. Supp. 2d 699 (D. Maryland, 2002)
Inland Mediation Board v. City of Pomona
158 F. Supp. 2d 1120 (C.D. California, 2001)