By Alan Pyke | Think Progress
The largest property management company in America systematically neglects properties in African-American and latino neighborhoods while conducting proper maintenance in white neighborhoods, according to a complaint filed with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on Tuesday.
Investigators from the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) looked at foreclosed properties managed by Safeguard Properties in Dayton, Toledo, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Memphis and measured the upkeep of the houses using a litany of different factors including secured doors, broken windows, mowed lawns, and both structural and cosmetic disrepair. In the Ohio towns, they found that houses in black and latino neighborhoods were three to four times as likely to exhibit three or more such deficiencies than those in white neighborhoods. In Baton Rouge, every house the NFHA looked at in communities of color was overgrown, while none of those in white neighborhoods was.
