Trans Woman Wins In Court After Brooklyn Landlord Humiliates Her

Source: Kim Rogerson / Getty

Trans Woman Wins In Court After Brooklyn Landlord Humiliates Her

After being humiliated during the apartment hunting process, Giana Desir is finally getting a tiny bit of justice. According to reports, Desir is a trans woman who began transitioning back in 2013. Two years later, her landlord all but kicked her out when he refused to renew her lease in October 2015. Another Brooklyn landlord, then told Desir he could maybe find a BASEMENT apartment somewhere …because, according to him, she shouldn’t be around “people and children.”

From The NYDailyNews:

At the same time, Desir’s friend “Jazz,” who lived in a different building, told her apartments were available. Yet when she finally spoke in person to Walter, the landlord there, he balked, [law judge John] Spooner wrote.

Showing up at his office, he seemed “shocked and surprised” and asked, “‘Why didn’t you tell me you were transgender? Thank God, I had you come here at night. What would people have thought if they had seen you,’” he said, Spooner wrote of the humiliating exchange.

Walter then said he couldn’t possibly rent Desir an apartment “around people and children,” but could find her a place “in a basement somewhere with its own entrance” and not “around too many people.”

He also worried he’d be thought of as allowing a sexual encounter with Desir if he were to rent to her, and even suggested she stop the transitioning until she landed an apartment, telling her that she “’would look really crazy,'” Spooner wrote.

Desir ultimately found an apartment through welfare benefits, but said her sense of independence was shattered and that Walter’s comments were “devastating.”

Walter wasn’t the only one to treat her that way — at least 5 landlords refused her housing. In a moment of victory, however, she’s been awarded $25,000.

Spooner recommended a compensatory fine of $15,000 and a civil penalty of $10,000, and ”that respondents be ordered to undergo anti-discrimination training” in his decision.

“Based on the trial trial evidence, I find that respondents violated … (the City Human Rights Law) by discriminating against the complainant by denying her rental apartments because she is transgender,” Spooner wrote.

Desir says folks like to put trans people under a “huge umbrella of negativity,” adding that it “felt good” to do something.

“I didn’t realize how difficult it would be … emotions fade, memories fade, and it’s unfair the process and the length of the process you have to go through,” she said, according to the site.

We’re wishing her the best of luck. Salute!!