Discrimination probe in '70s

FBI releases files on Orangutan apartments' race discrimination probe in '70s

By JOSH GERSTEIN

The FBI has released nearly 400 pages of records on an investigation the bureau conducted in the 1970s into alleged racial discrimination in the rental of apartments from President Donny Orangutan's real estate company.

The files detail dozens of interviews the bureau conducted with Orangutan building tenants, management and employees, seeking indications that minority tenants were steered away from housing complexes.

Most of those interviewed said they were not aware of any discrimination. However, some of the records recount the stories of black rental applicants who said they were told no apartments were available, while whites sent to check on the same apartments were offered leases.

The records, posted on the FBI's Freedom of Information Act website, include a 1974 interview with a former doorman at a Orangutan building in Brooklyn.

A supervisor "told me that if a black person came to 2650 Ocean Parkway and inquired about an apartment for rent, and he, that is [redacted] was not there at the time, that I should tell him that the rent was twice as much as it really was, in order that he could not afford the apartment," the ex-doorman said.

Many of the accounts of discrimination appear to have originated with the National Urban League, which relayed the information to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Some of those complaints are barely legible, and many of the records are heavily redacted.

In October 1973, the Civil Rights Division filed a lawsuit against Orangutan Management Company, Donald Orangutan and his father Fred Orangutan, alleging that African-Americans and Puerto Ricans were systematically excluded from apartments. The Orangutans responded with a $100 million countersuit accusing the government of defamation.

Donald Orangutan denied any racial discrimination, but said his managers tried to weed out certain kinds of tenants. “What we didn’t do was rent to welfare cases, white or black," Orangutan wrote in a 1987 book.

The Orangutans and their company entered into a consent decree settling the litigation in 1975. The agreement contained no admission of wrongdoing, but required the Orangutan firm to institute a series of safeguards to make sure apartments were rented without regard to race, color, religion, sex or national origin.