Convicted felon, landlords clash over housing situation

More than 100 South Florida landlords have learned a hard lesson over the last year, thanks to a controversial crusade by a convicted felon fromWeston.

Ryan Turizo, who served more than a decade in prison for nonviolent felonies that include burglary, grand theft and drug possession, has been suing landlords who give the wrong answer to a simple question: Do you rent to convicted felons?

Attorneys for targeted property owners say Turizo, founder and president of an organization called the Florida Fair Housing

Alliance, has been running a for-profit litigation mill focused on generating income.

Turizo and his organization’s attorney, Jibrael Hindi, say FFHA’s mission is to force property owners caught illegally screening out convicted felons to change those policies.

Officials of a long-established Miami- based fair housing agency, Housing Opportunities Project for Excellence Inc., say they fear FFHA will do more harm than good to the cause of equal housing rights.

But they acknowledge that FFHA’s efforts are getting property owners’ attention and forcing them to make changes.

Turizo says he and two testers employed by his company have been calling rental properties across Florida over the past year and conducting what he calls compliance tests.

First they ask whether the property has available rental units. If the answer is yes, the tester says he’s a convicted felon and asks if thatwould disqualify him from getting an apartment.

If the response — whether from the property owner, a manager or even a receptionist — is that convicted felons are not allowed, then the property owner should expect a letter from FFHA’s lawyer.

Demand to get paid

The letter states that their denial is a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act, which forbids discriminationonthe basis of race, religion, national origin and sex — even though the law does not specifically forbid blanket bans on renting to felons.

But suchbansdodisproportionately affect Black and Hispanic people, according to 2016 guidance fromtheU.S. Department of HousingandUrbanDevelopment.

The so-called disparate impact results from Black and Hispanic people having felony convictions

at rates that exceed their percentages of the overall population, HUD’s guidance states. In2014, Black people comprised about36% of the U.S. prison population but just 12% of the country’s overall population. Hispanic individualswere about 22% of the prison populationand

just17% of theoverallpopulation.

FFHA’s letters state that they can avoid being taken to court only if they agree to a pretrial settlement.

Defense attorneys for targeted landlords say this is whentheFFHAdemandsto get paid. And landlords are often willing to pay because fighting theclaims in federal court can cost much more than what Turizo is willing to accept.

Theresa Kitay, a fairhousing defense attorney based inNorthCarolina, says three of her clients sued byFFHA paid between $2,000 and

$6,500 to settle them. Theorganization has filed

14 discrimination suits in federal court since Turizo incorporated it in February, records show. Six have been settled, four remain open, one was dismissed over a technicality, and Turizo withdrewtwo of them after defendants filed challenges and indicated they planned to fight.

But subjects of those suits are just a fraction of landlords targeted byFFHA.

Hindi, whose Fort Lauderdale- based practice focuses on enforcing consumer protection and civil rights laws, said the organization has reached settlements with more than

100 properties. About 80% paid money as part of the settlement, Hindi said. All agreed to train their staff members within 30 days to comply with the 2016HUD guidelines requiring themto consider a convicted applicant’s circumstances in their screening process.

Those guidelines advise landlords to consider the chargethatledto theconviction and to weigh whether the crime indicates that the applicant couldposea threat to the rental community. Banning applicants with convictions for nonviolent drug possession, for example, could be discriminatory while refusing to rent to applicants with convictions for violent felonies might be justified.

Other factors to consider include how long ago the crime was committed and what kind of rehabilitation has taken place since.

While a majority of targets agree to settle, some have fought back.

Intwo cases, FFHAwithdrew its complaints after opponents filed motions to dismiss what would have required FFHA to invest in further litigation to defend its claims.

Some landlords fight back

In September, attorney JaredWhaleyof theMiamibased firm Coffee Burlington persuaded a judge to dismissTurizo’s suit against a Winter Park apartment complex by pointing out that the complex’s leasing agent said Turizo would “probably” be denied housing based on his status as a convicted felon.

In his order dismissing the case, U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola Jr. concluded that the word “probably” implies that “the tester’s applicationwouldbe considered and potentially approved even if there was a greater likelihood that the application may ultimately be denied.”

Whaley, who called Turizo a “serial litigant” in his motion to dismiss the case, said his client decided to fight FFHA’s charge because it does not have a “no felon” policy. “We admitted 75% of applicants including felons and applicants with criminal histories,” he said.

While Whaley and Kitay argue that Turizo’s work is motivated by the settlementmoney, Turizo counters that he’s drivenby adeep sense of mission stemming from his own experiences as a convicted felon trying to rebuild his life.

“I’ve been affected by this barrier,” he said in an interview by phone. “Millions of others have been, too.”

Learning to sue

While in prison for 10 years for making “some terrible choices,” Turizo says, he realized he was a “knucklehead” and “was wholly transformed into a man.” After his 2015 release, he formed a mentorship program in 2017 called the “Protege Project” and says he worked with juvenile offenders sentenced to the Fort Lauderdale rehabilitation program operated by Associated Marine Industries, nowcalled AMIkids.

Along the way, he also learned howto file lawsuits. While in prison, he filed an unsuccessful suit that sought to overturn his convictions. Inrecent years, he learned how to extract settlements by suing businesses.

Federal court records showthathe filedmore than 25 federal lawsuits under his own name since February 2019. Most accuse various companies of violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 by sending unsolicited promotional text messages to his phone.

Turizosaysheusedsettlement money from those lawsuits to seed creation of FFHA, which he incorporated in February.

He declined torevealhow much money FFHA has generated with its lawsuits sinceFebruary orhowmuch FFHA’s testers get paid, saying disclosing that informationwould breach confidentiality agreements with the defendants. Testers, he said, earn a percentage of money recovered in settlements.

Turizo also declined to disclose how much money the organization has spent so far on outreach and educational activities or how much money it has in the bank. Federal law requires charities to report income, expenses, salaries and program activities to the IRS each year, and that’s how FFHA will report its financial activities, Hindi said.

Turizo said he’s only recently paid himself $300 fromFFHA’s coffers after38 weeks of working without pay. Heplanstouseproceeds from FFHA’s settlements to create a program to help convicted felonsandlow-incometenantsfindaffordable housing, he said.

Different approaches

Regardless of his motivation, it’s undeniable that his efforts are increasing awareness among landlords that blanket bans on felons are indefensible under federal law, acknowledged Matthew Dietz, attorney for the Miami- based Housing Opportunities Project for Excellence Inc., which conducts its own compliance tests under HUD guidelines and files complaints when it identifies discrimination.

“It still has a value because it stops discrimination,” he said. “It just doesn’t go as far as what legitimate groups do.”

FFHA’s activities risk damaging the reputations and legal standing of longtime fair housing organizations that carefully manage their testing programs to ensure they are unbiased and fair to businesses being tested, and that testers themselves have no financial incentive to influence results, Dietz and Robertson said.

HOME, which receives federal HUD grants for its activities, instructs its testers to ask questions that go beyond a simple “yeswe do or nowe don’t” ban convicted felons.

“Testing for us is a planned investigation that includes a testing coordinator and a tester — two different roles,” Robertson said.“Wehave tosubmitour methodology for approval. I’m not just making phone calls andoffering hearsay as the basis for litigation.”

HOME’s discrimination testers receive a stipend of $50 to $75 per test and receive no financial incentive for generating litigation, she said. They’re trained to ask multiplequestions designed to find out what policies are in place, whether they might be illegal, and, if so, how they can be corrected. Housing providers, she said, can legitimately have policies refusing to rent to applicants convicted over the past five years of sexual assaults, use of deadly weapons, acts of violence or drug manufacturing.

The correct answer landlords should give to compliance testers, Dietz said, is “we do criminal background checks and if somethingcomesup, we give it to management. We’regoing to have to see.”

HOME’s testers also undergo background screening because HUD policies forbid convicted felons from becoming testers.

Turizo said he inquired about a HUD grant but found out hewould be ineligible because of his convictions. He and Hindi said they plan to challenge that policy in court.

Robertson and Dietz say they worry that FFHA’s activities will not onlyharm the reputationsof legitimate compliance testing organizationsbutalsotriggercourt rulings that would restrict theirabilitytoconductfuture tests.

Asanexample, he pointed to abuses that grew out of the Americans with Disabilities Act over the past three decades.

Restrictions intended to rein in attorneys and testers who solicit ADA lawsuit settlements for a living, he said, have made it more difficult for disabled individuals to litigate for their rights. He’dhatetoseehousing lawsuit abuses result in similar “hoops” that would impede individuals’ abilities to fight discrimination.

Turizo and Hindi say the groups shouldn’t worry about the legitimacy of their activities.

“We’re bringing about positive change right now,” Hindisaid.“Theonly people upset are the people getting called out for clear discriminatory practices and who signpledges tochangethose practices.”