ALL REALTORS & LANDLORDS ASKED TO ATTEND HEARING OR SEND IN TESTIMONY
Property Owners are finally getting a chance to address their concerns on how discrimination complaints are being processed at the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities this month. The State’s Program Review and Investigation Committee has announced a public hearing on this subject. The date is September 21st, 10:00am at the Legislative Office Building, 300 Capitol Avenue, Hartford Hearing Room 1-D. (Those wishing to testify, show up at 9:00am to sign-up)
CTPOA fully supports Fair Housing and its goals. We oppose discrimination but don’t want to fund an extreme political agenda at the expense of innocent Realtors, Property Owners and Businesses.
For several years CTPOA has reviewed many disturbing complaints about cases of tenants claiming discrimination by Landlords and Realtors and then demanding huge monetary settlements. Lately, many Property Owners are claiming its “Entrapment and Extortion” and want criminal charges brought for creating a racket and scheme to generate money by filing false and frivolous discrimination claims knowing the investigation process is strongly in favor of the complainant!
Several owners say they where entrapped by “paid testers” that asked leading questions and then filed complaints demanding in excess of $40,000 for minor violations of the CT law, many involving the Section-8 program. In Connecticut Section-8 is a protected class under “Lawful source of income” but the program is not a protected class at the Federal level adding to the confusion.
In some cases secret tape recordings where made without the owners knowledge or consent by individuals pretending to be apartment renters and then drew the owner into conversations about Section-8 that the elderly owners where unaware of the correct answers and these secret tape recording were being considered as evidence against the property owner. The owner settled with the tenant because to prove his innocence would cost triple in legal fees and court costs so the fake tenant is free to continue to use secret tape recoding and entrap other elderly property owners.
Perhaps there is no better case that proves how unbalanced the CT Fair Housing laws are than the Bill and Mary Luth case. Their case truly proves why we must reform these laws.
Click on the links below for more information regarding the upcoming hearing.
The Luths, a CHRO Failure and Sad Day for Connecticut
Public Hearing Announcement and Details
Taxpayer Funded Discrimination Study….Conflict of Interest Makes Study Worthless
