discrimination suit: “live with your people”

By Guest Contributor Angry Asian Man, originally published at Angry Asian Man

In New York, a woman is suing a Flushing Queens co-op board for trying to force her and her family out of their apartment building because she’s Chinese: Woman sues co-op for saying: Live with your people.

Lisa Sheen says board members at her building have made her life miserable, both directly and indirectly, since she purchased a sixth-floor unit for herself and her family in December 2004. At one point, they actually said that she should “live with her people”:

They waited months after she applied for an apartment to schedule her interview and then stonewalled her mortgage company until she lost its financing offer, according to legal papers.

When Sheen raised the money with the help of her employer, a real estate company, board members took a more active approach – telling her boss “to convince me to leave the building and move to the Chinese part of town,” she claims.

Boss Steve Silverberg wrote in a sworn affidavit that board members approached him during a visit to Sheen in February. They asked if he was Jewish, which he said he was. They told him “as a Jew, I should understand [that Sheen] should live with her people … in the Chinese area,” he said in legal papers.

When she filed papers for an apartment, the board was apparently already being sued by a tenant for racial discrimination against Asians. That case is still pending in Queens Supreme Court. The board countersued Sheen for $9 million for defamation and libel. That suit was dismissed. That’s racist!

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Photo credit: New York Daily News