Fulton Grace Realty Lawsuit: Plaintiffs, Allegations, and Response

Four Black women and two fair housing organizations filed the Fulton Grace Realty lawsuit on April 9, 2025, in Cook County Circuit Court, accusing the Chicago-based brokerage of systematically refusing to rent to tenants who use government housing vouchers. The complaint alleges violations of the Illinois Human Rights Act, which since January 1, 2023 has made “source of income” a protected class, and of Chicago’s Fair Housing Ordinance, which has banned voucher discrimination since 1999.¹²³

Who Sued and Where

The case is captioned Nancyann Adams et al. v. Fulton Grace Realty, LLC, Case No. 2025L004855, in the Law Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County. The individual plaintiffs are Nancyann Adams, Shavon Ellis, Lakendra Johnson, and Belinda Williams. They are joined by two organizational plaintiffs: HOPE Fair Housing Center and Rogers Park Community Council, which operates as Northside Community Resources. The plaintiffs are represented by the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, Legal Aid Chicago, and the law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner. An initial court date was scheduled for June 4, 2025.⁴⁵

What the Lawsuit Alleges

The complaint describes a company-wide practice of turning away voucher holders through several recurring tactics. According to the plaintiffs, Fulton Grace agents cut off communication once an applicant mentioned a voucher, refused to hand over application materials, imposed extra documentation requirements that non-voucher applicants did not face, and steered voucher holders toward unrelated websites like affordablehousing.com instead of processing inquiries through the firm’s own system.¹

The complaint also alleges that agents obstructed the administrative side of the voucher process. Under the Housing Choice Voucher program, landlords must cooperate with the Chicago Housing Authority on inspections and paperwork before a lease can be finalized. The plaintiffs say Fulton Grace agents failed to submit required documents, gave the CHA incorrect information, and ignored follow-up communications, running out the clock until units could be rented to non-voucher tenants.⁴

The claims are backed by a two-year investigation conducted from 2022 through 2024 by HOPE Fair Housing Center and Northside Community Resources, working with Legal Aid Chicago’s Fair Housing Testing Program. Trained testers were sent in matched pairs to inquire about the same Fulton Grace listings. Each pair shared similar budgets, family sizes, and personal characteristics. The only intentional difference was source of income: one tester said they would pay with employment income, the other disclosed a housing voucher.⁶⁴

The complaint says the investigation uncovered more than 20 instances in which agents treated voucher holders worse than non-voucher applicants. In September 2022, an agent reportedly required a voucher-holding tester to produce extra proof of rental payment history, saying that “people with vouchers often do not pay rent.” In July 2023, an agent expressed surprise that a voucher holder had a job. In a November 2023 paired test at the same apartment complex, the non-voucher tester was offered a flexible lease start date while the voucher-holding tester was told the inspection process would cause delays and was never given an application.⁴

All four individual plaintiffs are Black women. The complaint notes that Black women make up a primary demographic among voucher holders in Chicago, so source-of-income discrimination disproportionately affects them.¹

What the Four Plaintiffs Say Happened

Nancyann Adams was pregnant with her second child in 2023 and looking for a safer apartment. After touring a unit in West Town, she told the agent she planned to use a housing voucher. The agent stopped responding to her follow-ups and never provided a rental application, the complaint says. Adams could not find a new home before giving birth and renewed a lease in a building she considered unsafe.¹

Belinda Williams had experienced a decade of homelessness before obtaining a voucher. In November 2023, she inquired about a unit on Western Avenue. According to the complaint, the agent denied her an application after she mentioned the voucher, misstated her voucher budget as $1,718 when it was actually $3,400, and suggested she search on a third-party website. When Williams later applied through a different agent in January 2024, Fulton Grace rejected her application without a written explanation.⁴

Lakendra Johnson applied for a Woodlawn apartment in January 2025 for herself and her three children. Despite a positive tour and a credit score above 700, her application was denied because of two small collections on her credit report, one of which had already been paid. The complaint says the agent refused to let her provide a guarantor or submit additional financial documentation. Johnson continues to live in a unit with heat outages, electrical problems, and a broken stove.⁴

Shavon Ellis sought a safer home in 2023 after a stray bullet struck her leg inside her apartment. She had taken custody of her late sister’s three children. When she applied for a unit at Madison West Apartments, a Fulton Grace agent told her that processing vouchers “takes more time” and said the apartment had gone to another applicant. The complaint alleges that when Ellis was offered a different unit and submitted her voucher paperwork, Fulton Grace gave inconsistent information to the Chicago Housing Authority and eventually stopped responding, and she lost the housing opportunity.⁴

Fulton Grace’s Response

TJ Rubin, the founder and owner of Fulton Grace Realty, denied the allegations. “Fulton Grace Realty vehemently denies all allegations of discrimination, including any claims to the refusal of housing vouchers as a source of income,” Rubin said.¹

What the Plaintiffs Want

The plaintiffs are seeking monetary compensation for what they describe as housing instability, financial losses from application fees and storage costs, and emotional distress. They are also asking for an injunction, a court order that would require Fulton Grace to stop the alleged discriminatory practices and comply with voucher program requirements going forward. The complaint does not specify a dollar figure for damages.⁴

Why the Case Was Filed in Court

Voucher-discrimination complaints in Chicago are usually handled administratively by the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, but that pathway has been slow. Between January 2018 and March 2025, the CCHR received over 300 source-of-income discrimination complaints and only seven resulted in formal rulings, producing $4,750 in total fines. Most cases closed through confidential settlements. As of May 2025, the CCHR had 226 pending cases and six investigators.⁷ By filing in Cook County circuit court instead, the plaintiffs chose a route that can produce a public judicial ruling.

1
Chicago Sun-Times. Fulton Grace Realty Families Home Income Discrimination Lawsuit
2
Housing Choice Partners. SOI Campaign
3
City of Chicago. Section 8 Vouchers Source of Income Discrimination
4
Squarespace (Complaint PDF). Nancyann Adams v. Fulton Grace Realty, Complaint
5
Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. Source of Income Discrimination FGR
6
Legal Aid Chicago. HOPE Fair Housing Center, Northside Community Resources, Four Black Women File Lawsuit
7
Prism Reports. Chicago Section 8 Renters Housing Discrimination