Kettler Management Lawsuit: Voucher Discrimination Settlement

The Kettler Management housing voucher discrimination lawsuit was filed by the Equal Rights Center in D.C. Superior Court on September 12, 2023, and settled on March 5, 2024. Kettler, a McLean, Virginia-based property management firm, agreed to pay $140,000 and to overhaul how it screens applicants at its D.C. apartment communities, under three years of compliance monitoring by the Equal Rights Center.¹

What Kettler Was Accused of Doing

The Equal Rights Center (ERC) alleged that Kettler violated the D.C. Human Rights Act and the D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act by refusing to rent to holders of Housing Choice Vouchers and other government rental subsidies at six properties: Rise at Temple Courts, Lotus Square, Solstice, Park Kennedy, Union Heights, and Dock 79.²

The complaint described a set of screening tactics that, in the ERC’s telling, worked together to filter voucher holders out. Between July 2022 and August 2023, at least seven voucher holders told the ERC that Kettler had imposed minimum income requirements counting only their non-voucher income, rejected them based on credit history, refused to accept D.C. Department of Human Services Rapid Rehousing subsidies, or stretched the leasing process out until applicants gave up.²

Those practices ran into a specific piece of D.C. law. Section 2-1402.21(g) of the Human Rights Act, as amended in 2022, bars landlords from refusing to rent to voucher holders based on income level, credit score, or credit problems that predate the subsidy.³

The Tenant Story at the Center of the Case

One applicant’s experience threaded through three of the six buildings and gave the complaint its shape. At Rise at Temple Courts, a community manager told her directly that Kettler would not rent to her because she was using a Rapid Rehousing subsidy, according to the ERC.³ Rise at Temple Courts is owned by the District of Columbia and was built with public subsidies to replace a demolished public housing complex, which the ERC called “particularly galling.”⁴

She was later offered a unit at Lotus Square, but it failed two DHS inspections for rat infestations and housing code violations, and DHS stopped paying rent because Kettler had not made repairs. When she then applied to the Solstice, Kettler denied her for “derogatory credit information.” The ERC alleged that the damaging credit entry came directly from the DHS payment stoppage at Lotus Square, so Kettler’s own failure to maintain a habitable unit had produced the credit problem it used to reject her at the next building.⁴

The complaint also placed the decisions inside Kettler’s executive ranks. Executive Vice President and General Counsel Sean Curtin weighed in on the applicant’s file, writing that “even with the voucher covering her rent,” she “appears to have difficulty managing her debts, which increases her risk profile as a tenant.” The ERC pointed to that email as evidence that the practices were “directed from the very top of Kettler’s organization.”⁴

Matthew Handley of Handley Farah & Anderson, which represented the ERC alongside Crowell & Moring LLP, said the investigation had “revealed outrageous barriers for voucher holders trying to rent homes at Kettler managed properties.”²

What the Settlement Requires

Kettler and the ERC signed a settlement on March 5, 2024, announced publicly on March 19. Kettler agreed to pay $140,000 in three installments: $70,000 within ten days of the effective date, $35,000 on the first anniversary, and $35,000 on the second. The payment covers damages, attorneys’ fees, and the cost of future compliance testing and staff training.⁵

The operational changes reach further than the check. For three years, at every Kettler-managed multifamily rental property in D.C., the agreement requires:

No minimum income or credit score requirements for applicants using income-based housing subsidies, and no consideration of credit score or criminal history before a conditional offer is made.⁵
Affirmative marketing that Kettler properties accept voucher holders and that standard income and credit requirements do not apply to them, with non-discrimination statements posted in English and Spanish at corporate and public-facing offices.⁵
Leasing staff must ask about voucher status before running background checks and must give applicants written eligibility criteria before collecting any application fees.⁵
Annual three-hour fair housing training for all leasing and property management staff, led by the ERC, with Kettler’s Director of Compliance designated as a Housing Choice Voucher liaison for voucher-holder questions.¹
Eighteen compliance tests over three years, conducted by the ERC. If a test reveals a violation, Kettler has 30 days to correct it before further action.⁵

If you hold a Housing Choice Voucher and apply to a Kettler property in D.C., these are the standards the company is now bound to.

Where This Case Fits in D.C.

More than 10,000 D.C. residents use Housing Choice Vouchers, and enforcement against landlords who turn them away has picked up since the 2022 amendments to the Human Rights Act. The D.C. Attorney General filed the first lawsuit under those amendments in March 2023, targeting a landlord who allegedly refused certain voucher types and falsely told voucher holders units were unavailable while offering them to other applicants.⁶

The ERC has been active on the same front. It reached a 2023 settlement with Adam’s Investment Group for $235,000 and mandatory compliance testing,⁷ and in August 2025 sued JAG Management Company and Jefferson Apartment Group over allegedly discriminatory income requirements and overly broad criminal background screening at four Navy Yard, Shaw, and NoMa properties. Across these matters, the ERC’s investigations have documented discriminatory practices at properties totaling over 3,000 units in the District.⁸

1
Equal Rights Center. Press Release: ERC and Kettler Reach Settlement Agreement
2
Equal Rights Center. Press Release: ERC Files Lawsuit Against Kettler Management
3
Equal Rights Center. ERC v. Kettler Management Complaint
4
Washington City Paper. Undercover Voucher Housing Discrimination
5
Equal Rights Center. ERC-Kettler Agreement
6
Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia. AG Schwalb Files First Lawsuit Enforcing New Anti-Discrimination Protections
7
Equal Rights Center. Press Release: ERC Reaches Two Settlements
8
Cohen Milstein. We Don’t Accept Section 8: Undercover Testers Found Voucher Discrimination Across D.C.