Latino immigrant families living in a Fairfax County, Virginia, mobile home park filed a lawsuit against their landlord and property management company over alleged discriminatory treatment.

According to ThinkProgress’ report yesterday (May 25), Virginia-based Legal Aid Justice Center filed the complaint on behalf of four families. The suit names Waple Homes Mobile Park and management company A.J. Dwoskin & Associates, Inc. It alleges that after discovering the families’ undocumented relatives living with them, the park and company either increased their rent or refused to renew their lease.

The landlord reportly began enforcing a little-used policy that requires Social Security numbers for adult occupants. When undocumented residents could not provide that information, the landlord posted eviction notices and imposed month-to-month leases that ThinkProgress said "were as much as $300 more than what they paid for in their annual leases."

"In this area especially, but also in much of the country, the rates of Latinos who lack a Social Security number is far, far, far greater than say, White people, African-American people, Asian folks," Legal Aid Justice Center’s Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg told ThinkProgress. "A policy of this nature is bound to have a discriminatory impact on Latinos. They shouldn’t be able to profess surprise that this is disproportionately kicking Latinos out of the park as opposed to White people who live in the park."  

ThinkProgress notes that the Fair Housing Act prohibits this kind of discriminatory treatment of undocumented immigrant tenants.