Orland Park Landlord Sued For Racial Discrimination

ORLAND PARK, IL — A nonprofit claims an Orland Park landlord and his wife have engaged in racially discriminatory rental practices and is now suing the couple in federal court. According to a lawsuit filed on Nov. 27, South Suburban Housing Center, a Homewood-based organization that promotes equal opportunity in housing, Dennis and Mary Kolios of Landmark Realty repeatedly refused to make appointments to show available apartments to black prospective tenants and lied about the availability of housing to black applicants.

"They demonstrated this by telephone screening three separate African-American sounding prospective tester applicants; refusing to give even the first two African-American testers the address of the property and telling the third African-American tester that the apartment had already been rented when it had not," the lawsuit reads.

The nonprofit agency goes on to allege that the couple readily made appointments for each of the white testers who contacted them and even showed an available unit to two of them not long after an African-American tester had called.

According to South Suburban Housing Center, it began an investigation into the couple on July 25, 2019. The nonprofit accuses the owners of Landmark Realty of violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968 concerning apartment units located at 8611 Lexington Circle in Orland Park.

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Dennis Kolios denies having ever discriminated against prospective renters on the basis of race and said he only screens clients for their ability to pay rent, not their demographic qualities.

He told the newspaper that there must have been a misunderstanding or some other innocent explanation as to why he did not follow up with the black-sounding testers.

He also added that it's common practice for him to ask prospective renters about their credit scores and if they’ve ever been evicted from a property. If their scores are below 660 or if they’ve previously been evicted, he said that he typically won’t rent to them.

“Every time I speak to someone I tell them the same thing exactly,” he told the newspaper.

The South Suburban Housing Center is requesting a jury trial and requesting punitive damages as a result of the "defendants' willful, malicious and reckless conduct."

Read the complaint here: