A Cincinnati woman is suing her landlord, claiming he violated her civil rights by demanding she move out of the property because of her race.
Her lawyers say there are voicemails and text messages proving the landlord wanted her gone, not because she is a bad tenant but because she is Black.
The landlord denies these claims. He says he just wanted the woman and her family evicted because they trashed the home. He also told WCPO that someone was impersonating him, a claim, he says, he can prove.
Dermisha Pickett, the mother of six, hired civil rights lawyer Fanon Rucker to file a racial discrimination counterclaim against Sergey Briskman, the owner of the home the family has rented for eight years. She says she has never missed a rental payment nor has been late paying her rent to any of the various owners of the house.
Briskman purchased the house in 2020 from another owner, who allowed the property to go into foreclosure. Pickett, who is disabled, moved into the home in September 2014 and has been raising her family there since. She started having issues with her new landlord in January 2021, the lawsuit alleges. He started “suggesting he no longer wanted her living at the property.”
This came to a head in January 2023 when the house needed to be inspected as a part of the Federal Housing Choice Voucher Program (Section 8).
The Section 8 program requires any needed repairs to be fixed in order for the landlord to continue to receive payments through the federal program that covers a portion of the tenant’s rent based on income.
“I’m not fixing anything until you leave the house so I will make sure it doesn’t pass inspection on the 2/15,” the complaint says he wrote in a text message.
The lawsuit alleges the landlord told her on multiple occasions he did not want a Black family living on his Hamilton County property anymore.
“I told you I’m not getting anything the inspection will fail because I’m not…
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