The irony is as thick as the chargebacks from the #TwoForVerisk NAMFS Executive Director Eric Miller and NAMFS President Matt Zoldowski. Safeguard Properties, a NAMFS member firm controlled by Orthodox Jews, has been fighting racial discrimination charges dating back to 2018. The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) joined with 19 fair housing organizations, and two homeowners in Maryland to file a federal Fair Housing Act lawsuit against Bank of America, N.A., Bank of America Corp., and Safeguard Properties Management, LLC (“Bank of America/Safeguard”). And stall as long as they could, the roosters finally came home to roost at Safeguard. The lawsuit alleges Defendants intentionally failed to provide routine exterior maintenance and marketing at Bank of America-owned homes in working- and middle-class African American and Latino neighborhoods in 37 metropolitan areas, while they consistently maintained similar bank-owned homes in comparable white neighborhoods.
The data presented in the federal lawsuit, which is supported by substantial photographic evidence, shows a glaring pattern of discriminatory conduct by Bank of America/Safeguard. More than 35,000 photos document the relevant routine exterior maintenance conditions of the homes. In neighborhoods of color, Plaintiffs found evidence of consistently poor exterior maintenance, such as wildly overgrown grass and weeds, unsecured doors and windows, damaged steps and handrails, accumulated trash and debris, unsecured pools, graffiti, and even dead animals decaying in yards. Plaintiffs investigated more than 1,600 Bank of America-owned homes in working- and middle-class white, African-American, and Latino neighborhoods. The lawsuit alleges that Bank of America-owned homes in predominantly white working- and middle-class neighborhoods are far more likely to have the lawns mowed and edged regularly, invasive weeds and vines removed, windows and doors secured or repaired, debris and trash removed, leaves raked, and graffiti erased from the property. Bank of America took possession of these homes after it foreclosed on the properties and became the owner of record. As owner of these homes, Bank of America is responsible for routine exterior maintenance on all of its properties.
Lisa Rice, President and CEO of NFHA said, “Bank of America and Safeguard’s intentional failure to correct their discriminatory treatment in African American and Latino neighborhoods—the same communities hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis—is systemic racism. The purposeful neglect of bank-owned homes in communities of color devalues the properties and the lives of the families in the neighborhoods around them. The health and safety hazards created by these blighted bank-owned homes negatively affect the residents, especially the children, living nearby. We have asked Bank of America and Safeguard to provide the same standard of routine exterior maintenance and marketing for all of its bank-owned homes, regardless of the age, value, or racial composition of the neighborhood in which they are located.”
Ensuring that NAMFS firms like Safeguard Properties are held accountable, a federal court has found that the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) and other fair housing organizations have presented sufficient evidence that Bank of America discriminated based on race in its maintenance and marketing of foreclosed-upon properties for the case to go to a jury. On 27 March 2023, Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland resoundingly rejected Bank of America’s attempt to have the Fair Housing Act case dismissed.
NFHA, 19 other fair housing organizations, and two homeowners in Maryland filed the lawsuit in 2018 against Bank of America, N.A., and its maintenance vendor, Safeguard Properties Management, LLC. The lawsuit alleges that for over a decade, across 37 different metropolitan areas, Bank of America and Safeguard failed to maintain and market bank-owned homes in Black and Latino neighborhoods as well as in majority-White neighborhoods. Properties in Black and Latino neighborhoods were three times more likely to have significant maintenance or marketing deficiencies.
