The Second-Largest Individual Fair Housing Settlement in DOJ History Just Came Down A mother asked for 14 months. Her son had a genetic disorder that left him permanently immobile. There were vacant ground-floor units the entire time. Her leasing office told her at one point that a unit was being prepared for her. She was never told it was ready. Then the property sold. Ambling Property Investments closed in August 2022. Within days, they moved the family into a hotel at no charge while crews remediated mold in the ground-floor units. By November 2022, the family had keys. Same property. Same units. Same paperwork. Different ownership, different answer. Fair Housing law calls this the interactive process. When a disabled resident asks for an accommodation, the landlord owes a real conversation about how to make it work, with a yes, a no, or a workable alternative on a real timeline. Russell appears to have offered none of it. Ambling offered all of it on day one. A few things this case puts on the table for anyone who owns or operates rental housing. An accommodation request needs an owner inside your organization. Not a default approver, but a defined path with a defined clock. A 14-day response standard with mandated documentation is normal in well-run portfolios. Russell ran 14 months. The liability you create does not transfer when you sell. Russell sold the property in 2022. The complaint was filed in 2024. The settlement landed in 2025. They are still writing the check, and the buyer who actually solved the problem is not a defendant. When something is going wrong on a property, the leasing office is rarely the root cause. The leasing agent who told Ms. Jackson a unit was being prepared was probably told that herself. Whatever broke in this case broke above her. Pull the accommodation request log for any property you own. If there isn’t one, that’s the first finding. The companies that get sued for Fair Housing violations rarely set out to discriminate. They set out to manage occupancy, NOI, and turn cost, and a request from a mother in a second-floor unit was none of those things. That’s how a $750,000 invoice gets written. https://lnkd.in/dEcQmt-Z