8/26/2003

LANDLORDS IN Massachusetts who have half a mind to deny a house or apartment to a prospective tenant on the basis of race might want to reconsider. A settlement announced Friday by Attorney General Tom Reilly made clear that there's a price to pay for discrimination -- and that price is appropriately steep. A white Belmont landlord agreed to pay a black aerospace engineer $50,000 for rejecting his application to rent her single-family home after finding out his race. It is a victory for anyone concerned about racial justice and for a region struggling to overcome its image as an inhospitable place for minorities. Reilly's complaint alleged that Mary Murnane, 64, violated Massachusetts fair housing laws by refusing to rent to Stephen Ruffin, who was moving here with his wife, Karen, two children, and their border collie from an Atlanta suburb in the summer of 2000 to work as a visiting professor at MIT. After a real estate broker showed Ruffin the house, he completed the application, paid the security deposit and broker's fee, and provided positive character references, including one for the dog. The rental proceeded smoothly until Ruffin provided the owner with a copy of an offer letter from MIT for a position as a Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Associate.

Murnane, who had never met the family, became angry and called the broker to confirm that the Ruffins are African-American. The complaint alleges that the landlord told the broker the neighbors would be unhappy if she rented to a black family.