Bad Bad Vietnamese Landlords

Friday, January 11, 2008

As Asian Americans we know firsthand how bias, prejudice, and racism can affect our rights as individuals, so one of the things that I have no tolerance for is when people from the Asian American community turn around and deny other minority races and ethnicities the same rights because of their own prejudice like these Vietnamese American landlords who evicted their Hispanic tenants in favor of Vietnamese tenants:

Owners of a Garden Grove apartment complex agreed Friday to pay $270,844 to settle housing discrimination lawsuits accusing them of evicting Hispanic families in favor of Vietnamese tenants, officials said. The Department of Justice filed complaints against Gary Luke, Mary Ngo and Hoa Ngo regarding an apartment complex on Adland Street, said Connie Der Torossian of the Fair Housing Council of Orange County.

The complaint accused the owners of terminating leases of Hispanic tenants to replace them with Vietnamese tenants, misrepresenting the availability of units to non-Vietnamese prospective tenants, and making statements in connection with the rental of apartment units that expressed a preference, limitation or discrimination based on national origin.
I'm all up for helping your own and working together - but doing so at the expense of other minority communities isn't the way to do it - and what type of person throws children out on the street because their Hispanic versus Asian?

I just wish that on top of the money, the settlement would have also included 300 hours of volunteer time at a homeless shelter so maybe the landlords could remember how much of a basic need housing is, and that no one should ever be discriminated against for simply wanting a roof over their head.