Marckus Williams and the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana v. Progress Residential, LLC
On November 20, 2024, Relman Colfax filed a class action complaint in federal court against
Progress Residential, the nation’s largest single-family rental provider, for alleged discriminatory practices against Black renters through arbitrary criminal history policies. The lawsuit accuses Progress of enforcing blanket bans without assessing individual circumstances, disproportionately affecting Black applicants who are systematically overrepresented in the criminal legal system. The suit was filed on behalf of named Plaintiff Marckus Williams on behalf of a class of Black applicants and by the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana (FHCCI) pursuant to the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the Indiana Fair Housing Law.
Progress is the largest owner and manager of single-family rental homes in the nation, extending across 38 metropolitan areas in 19 states. With a management portfolio exceeding 90,000 homes, Progress's alleged discriminatory practices are believed to have a widespread and detrimental impact on Black individuals, perpetuating a practice of illegal discrimination on the basis of race in the marketing and rental of housing units.
Throughout all of its single-family rental homes, Plaintiffs claim that Progress maintains a policy and practice of automatically denying applicants when their screening report shows a record of any felony convictions within the past ten years, convictions for certain felonies regardless of when they occurred, and convictions for certain misdemeanors within the past three years. Progress advertises this policy on its website, where it states that applications “will be denied for the [above] criminal convictions[.]” The Complaint asserts that Progress does not inquire into whether the information on an applicant’s screening report is correct. Nor does it take into account any relevant facts beyond the report, such as the conditions surrounding the purported offense or any evidence of changed circumstances.
As Plaintiffs detail in their Complaint, racial disparities in the criminal justice system are well-established, persistent, and widely known. Black individuals are incarcerated at rates significantly disproportionate to their numbers in the United States general population. As of 2022, at the national level, the overall rate of incarceration of Black individuals was 4.85 times that of white individuals.
In December of 2022, Plaintiff Marckus Williams, who is a Black man, applied to rent a Progress home in Indianapolis and paid an application fee. His screening report showed three prior criminal convictions. Had Progress inquired further, it would have learned that two of the listed convictions had been expunged, and one was not a conviction at all. It would have also learned that in the eight years since his last conviction, Mr. Williams had built a business and been a responsible tenant for seven years. But Progress did not inquire into the convictions on Mr. Williams’s screening report, nor did it give Mr. Williams an opportunity to provide this or other relevant information. Progress applied its blanket ban, and automatically denied Mr. Williams’s rental application.
Mr. Williams’s struggle to find housing eventually brought him to FHCCI, a local non-profit organization that promotes open access to housing.
FHCCI undertook a comprehensive investigation into Progress’s practices and their discriminatory effects. This investigation included investigative calls to ascertain the scope of Progress’s criminal history policy. Through these investigative calls, FHCCI confirmed that Progress does in fact apply the categorical ban described on its website and applied to Mr. Williams to all applicants, and that this policy applies to all Progress homes nationwide.
Across the nation, including the areas where Progress operates, there are pervasive racial disparities at every juncture of the criminal justice system. The Complaint alleges that the proportion of Black people disqualified by Progress’s blanket ban on renting to people with misdemeanor convictions between 2019 and 2021 is 4.44 times greater than the proportion of white people affected. For those with felony convictions between 2012 and 2021, the proportion of disqualified Black applicants is 8.16 times greater than the proportion of white people disqualified.
Mr. Williams is likely just one of hundreds, if not thousands, of Black individuals who have been discriminated against by Progress’s policy of not renting to certain justice-involved applicants. As such, Mr. Williams brings his claims on behalf of not only himself, but all Black applicants who were otherwise qualified to rent with Progress but were automatically rejected from tenancy based on Progress’s criminal history policy.
Guidance issued by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2016 and again in 2022 recommends individualized review as a less discriminatory alternative to categorically banning certain justice-involved applicants. For years, major industry organizations have disseminated information about this guidance and emphasized the importance of dispensing with blanket bans.
This suit is brought forward to prevent Progress from continuing its discriminatory and unlawful conduct and ensure that applicants injured by Progress’s practices will have a meaningful opportunity to secure desperately needed rental housing.
The Relman Colfax litigation team includes Lila Miller, Ellora Israni, and Valerie Comenencia Ortiz, with paralegal support from Jake Hogan and Esmeralda Hermosillo. Relman Colfax is assisted by local counsel RileyCate, LLC.