May 3, 2008: Vol. 31, No. 18

Discrimination against kids — in Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope?

No way, say real-estate brokers, in the wake of last week’s lawsuit by a Manhattan couple who claimed that agents from Brown Harris Stevens twice refused to show them apartments because they had a baby.

“We would not work with a landlord who said he didn’t want anything to do with kids,” said Joseph Fuer, associate managing director of Corcoran’s Brooklyn Heights office — which itself was accused in 2006 of discriminating against African-Americans.

One Brooklyn Heights broker was so shocked by the allegations that she scheduled a meeting to refresh her agents on the law.

“It’s the owners that are really wrong,” she said. “We consider rentals like marriages — we’re matching people. We never discriminate.”

Real estate agents in Park Slope — arguably the city’s most kid-friendly nabe — agree.

“If someone gives you any illegal renting parameters, you walk away from it,” said broker Rosetta Farrell of Heights Berkeley Realty. “If they say, ‘We don’t want an old person,’ or ‘We don’t want a child,’ you walk away from it because that’s age discrimination.”

Jamie Katz and Lisa Nocera say they only found out about the law after Brown Harris Stevens brokers thrice allegedly steered the couple and their 1-year-old son, Bruno, away from potentially perfect apartments.

In each instance, Katz and Nocera said, brokers told them that they couldn’t rent an apartment because of dangerous outdoor spaces or hazardous lead paint — but denials even on those grounds is not legal.

“They prey on your fears and your ignorance, that’s how they get away with discriminating against children with families,” Nocera said. “The brokers are licensed, they’re trained. They should know what the law is.”

Nocera and Katz contacted the Fair Housing Justice Center, which sent undercover investigators to Brown Harris Stevens.

On top of the couple’s allegations, their suit declares that a Brown Harris Stevens broker tried to keep an investigator posing as a father from viewing a Brooklyn Heights apartment. After trying to talk him out of visiting the State Street rental, the broker handed him a “brochure about the dangers of lead paint to further discourage him and steer him away from the apartment.”

The suit alleges that the same broker eagerly showed the same space to a childless investigator, never mentioning lead paint.

Brown Harris Stevens declined to comment.

Not surprisingly, the accusations of child discrimination have Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope mommies and daddies throwing tantrums.

“Look at them — they’re so cute. Who would discriminate against them?” said Brooklyn Heights mom Laurice Arroyon, who was playing with her daughter in Cadman Plaza Park.

— with Ricky Barlin

©2008 The Brooklyn Paper