Evicting elderly residents from their home for holding a Bible Study is not only outrageous, it’s illegal. Ken Hauge is a retired Lutheran minister. He and his wife, Liv, received an eviction notice from Community Realty Company (CRC) stating the Bible study Ken leads in his apartment is a “business activity” and violates his lease. The Bible study previously met in the apartment complex community room until CRC instituted a policy “banning religious services or other religious activities” in the community room. Attorneys from First Liberty Institute sent a letter to CRC’s attorney detailing how CRC’s actions constitute religious discrimination in housing, a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act. The letter also demands the eviction notice be rescinded and the Hauge’s religious liberty be restored.

By:  First Liberty Staff – firstliberty.org – July 2018

In January of 2017, Ken Hauge and his wife moved into an apartment at the Evergreens at Smith Run, a senior living community in Fredericksburg, Virginia, managed by Community Realty Company (“CRC”) in Silver Spring, Maryland. Ken is a mechanical engineer and retired Lutheran minister who volunteers part-time pastoring at a small church located in a nearby shopping center. For some time, other Evergreens residents had discussed the possibility of starting a resident Bible study group. When the Hauges moved in, those residents asked Ken to lead the Bible study. He agreed and applied to the apartment complex manager to reserve the community room for the Bible study.

The community room hosts various resident social events, such as birthday parties, anniversary parties, baby showers, bingo, bridge, and poker games, and a monthly social dinner. These events are marked on a monthly calendar distributed to all residents. The calendar notes which events are Evergreens-sponsored and which are resident events and includes a disclaimer that resident events are not attributable to the Evergreens. Ken reserved the room for the weekly Bible study in early 2017 after putting up a $100 deposit. However, management refused to allow him to call the event a “Bible study,” requiring instead that he call it a “Book Review.”

The Evergreens manager ultimately canceled the reservation, and a Bible study attendee welcomed the group into her apartment, where she hosted the Bible study for the remainder of 2017. In early 2018, the Evergreens finally permitted the Bible study to use the community room.

Management Bans Religious Services from Common Areas

On July 23, 2018, the Evergreens instituted a new, six-page community room policy. The policy placed onerous regulations on community room use and prohibited, among others, using the Community Room for “religious services or for other religious purposes.”
In a certified letter, also dated July 23, Ken and his wife received an eviction notice. That notice informed him that CRC considers his Bible study leadership to constitute “conducting a business” prohibited by his lease and, as a result, unless he ceases to lead the Bible study, whether in the community room or in his private apartment, his lease will terminate on August 31st.

First Liberty Legal Action

Attorneys with First Liberty Institute sent a demand letter detailing how CRC and the Evergreens’s actions constitute religious discrimination in housing, a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act.

Read the full letter here.

“Evicting elderly residents from their homes for holding a Bible study is not only outrageous, it’s illegal,” said Lea Patterson, associate counsel for First Liberty. “It’s frightening that a management company would use the threat of eviction to stop residents from meeting together to discuss any issue, let alone their faith.”

First Liberty also represents Donna Dunbar; a Port Charlotte, Florida woman denied the use of her condo’s community room for a Bible study.

To see this case and others like it, click read more.

Source: Cases | Ken Hauge | First Liberty