A Black woman in New Jersey who says her white landlord discriminated against her by demanding much higher rent than she charged white tenants for subsidized housing, imposing burdensome lease terms and harassing her family is now representing herself in a civil lawsuit after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) agreed to a settlement in the case that did not include monetary damages.
Brittany Doyle, 38, and her three minor children have been living in a hotel since they were evicted from their apartment in Mount Arlington, New Jersey, in November 2022.
That eviction followed a tense legal battle with her landlord, Juliet Payseur, who co-owned and managed the five-unit property where Doyle and her family had lived in an unattached cottage since 2016.
Doyle claimed in her lawsuit filed on her behalf by the DOJ in U.S. District Court in New Jersey in January (and obtained by Atlanta Black Star) that when Payseur bought the property in May 2021, she proposed to raise the rent on all tenants to “market value,” and sent Doyle a notice that the monthly rent on her two-bedroom unit would go from $1,309 per month to $2,000 per month.
Meanwhile, Payseur told “S.S.,” a white tenant with minor children living in a three-bedroom unit, that she planned to increase her rent from $2,000 to $2,400 per month, the complaint says.
Doyle relied on an $850 subsidized housing voucher from the Morris County Housing Authority (MCHA) to pay her rent, and “S.S.” also used a housing voucher to cover hers.
Payseur sent the MCHA a written notice that if the housing authority and its clients “do not agree to this, I will immediately file eviction paperwork,” the lawsuit says.
The housing authority pushed back, rejecting the rental increase and saying it would not renegotiate rental subsidy terms prior to the tenants’ lease renewal dates. For Doyle, that was January 1, 2022.
In July 2021, Payseur entered into a new lease with S.S., charging her $1,540 a month, amounting to an increase of 2.7%.
That same month, Payseur told Doyle she would not renew her lease unless MCHA agreed to increase the rent payment to $1,800 per month, a 37.5% increase. The housing authority told Payseur the requested rental increase was not reasonable, and said it would only agree to the same $40 per month increase that it had approved for S.S..
Payseur refused to accept the proposed 3% rental increase and sent Doyle a notice that her lease would not be renewed and that she had to vacate the property by the end of the year.
Later, she proposed a new rental rate of $1,500 per month for Doyle, a 14.6% increase, as well as new burdensome lease terms, the lawsuit says.
The terms included a $100 per day late fee for rent not paid by the second day of the month. By contrast, S.S.’s new lease included a $50 late fee, triggered on the fifth day of the month, more favorable terms also enjoyed by another white tenant, the complaint contends.
The proposed lease also gave Payseur the right to install and monitor cameras on the premises without any restrictions on the cameras’ locations, and to forbid Doyle from having overnight guests. Those terms were not in S.S.’s new lease.
Doyle told Atlanta Black Star that six cameras were eventually installed in trees around the property, and that four of them were pointed at her unit.
Doyle’s new lease also prohibited consumption of “all drugs” — without exception — on the property, a restriction that S.S. was not subject to. Doyle had thyroid cancer and had obtained a medical marijuana card permitting her to take the drug, which she says she did by smoking and vaping.
Payseur also singled out Doyle for new provisions requiring her to be responsible for snow removal, for maintaining the unit’s oil tank through an independent service contract with an oil company, and for paying the first $100 of the cost of any repairs to the apartment.
Doyle claims that Payseur allowed her unit to run out of heating oil while refilling the oil tanks of the other units on the property.
Doyle found the new terms Payseur was offering to be unreasonable and refused to sign the lease proposal, telling her she wouldn’t pay more than the housing authority had approved.
Meanwhile, the complaint says, Payseur took steps to terminate Doyle’s housing voucher, knowing that without the subsidy Doyle would not be able to afford her rent and would have to leave.
On Dec. 8, 2021, the lawsuit says, Payseur texted Doyle:
“When do you intend to leave? I don’t want to have any issues or have to file eviction paperwork because then you’ll lose your housing voucher … I just talked to [MCHA] and you will in fact lose your housing voucher. Once I file the eviction notice, Section 8 won’t make payments for you. I’ll be able to get a judgment against you for all back rent while this process takes place…I’m surprised you would want to risk so much when you can just find another place.”
On Dec. 10, Payseur alleged to MCHA that Doyle’s boyfriend was living at the property but was not on the lease. She later sent the agency video footage captured by security cameras on the property, alleging that it showed that Doyle’s boyfriend and a fourth child, an infant, lived there.
Doyle told Atlanta Black Star that her boyfriend never lived in her apartment, nor did the baby mentioned, who is her nephew.
Payseur also filed two police reports falsely alleging that Doyle and her boyfriend engaged in drug-related criminal activity on the property, the lawsuit says, and urged the housing authority to disqualify her from the Section 8 housing program.
Police reports made clear that Doyle had not committed any crimes and documented that she had a valid medical marijuana card, the DOJ claimed in the lawsuit.
Payseur filed a complaint against Doyle in Morris County Superior Court on Jan. 14, 2022 seeking to evict her.
Doyle filed a housing discrimination complaint with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) four days later. After HUD interviewed Payseur as part of its investigation, Payseur began to harass and threaten Doyle and her children, the lawsuit says.
Payseur “disparaged Ms. Doyle’s parenting in an effort to influence MCHA’s termination decision,” the complaint says, and also tried to interfere with her efforts to seek alternate affordable housing by calling the Office of Temporary Assistance to complain about her.
Payseur succeeded in having Doyle’s housing voucher terminated and evicting her on the grounds that she had unauthorized tenants living in her unit.
The Doyle family left the property in November 2022, moving into an extended stay hotel at a cost of $3,000 per month, she says.
Even after they moved out, Payseur continued to target her and her children, the lawsuit claims, by making a child welfare complaint against her with the state Division of Child Protection and Permanency, alleging that Doyle had been evicted and left her children’s bedroom furniture behind.
Payseur also contacted the Mount Arlington school district to report that Doyle’s children no longer lived in the town but were still “being picked up and dropped off at the bus stop.”
HUD determined that reasonable cause existed to believe that Payseur had violated the Fair Housing Act and issued a charge of discrimination against her and her real estate company, 20-22 McGregor Avenue, LLC, in September 2024.
Doyle decided to pursue the case in federal civil court, and the U.S. Department of Justice filed its lawsuit against Payseur on Doyle’s behalf in January, charging her with discriminating on the rental of dwellings on the basis of race, as well as with coercing, threatening, intimidating or interfering with Doyle and her rights protected by the Fair Housing Act.
The lawsuit sought injunctions against the defendants to prevent them from discriminating against future tenants and unspecified monetary damages.
In the months since the complaint was filed, U.S. attorneys and legal counsel for Payseur negotiated settlement terms. The defendants offered monetary compensation of $28,000, which the DOJ was willing to accept, Doyle says, but she was not.
“I felt that it didn’t even begin to cover not only the financial damage, but the emotional and physical damages as well,” she says.
To cover the $3,000 per month to rent a one-room hotel room for her family over the past two and a half years, Doyle says she has to work three jobs — in retail sales, as a home health aide, and as a medical liaison for a county social service agency providing Medicaid to seniors.
“I’m working all the time, I’m stressed all the time, and it impacts my relationship with my children,” who are now 6-, 10- and 14 years old, she says, causing her to miss participating in their extracurricular activities, as well as to miss her own doctors’ appointments.
“I can’t take time off to, you know, take care of myself the way I need to mentally,” she says. “I was in therapy, but I haven’t been able to continue therapy because, again, I have to work. I’m always working. And it really just makes me feel like I’m worthless.”
On July 9, the United States entered into a three-year settlement agreement with Payseur and her real estate company.
The settlement agreement prevents the defendants from future discrimination on the basis of race and/or color under the Fair Housing Act; bars Payseur from personally performing property management responsibilities at, or contacting tenants of, defendants’ residential rental properties (the agreement lists three, in New Jersey and New York); and imposes requirements for Fair Housing Act training, nondiscrimination policies and advertising on her and her agents.
Payseur and her real estate company admit no wrongdoing in the agreement, which does not include any monetary damages.
Unsatisfied with the settlement terms, which she called “a slap in the face,” Doyle has moved to intervene in the lawsuit, and on July 15, filed a proposed Complaint-In-Intervention that demands $150,000 in compensatory damages and additional punitive damages to be determined at trial.
“I want real accountability,” she says of Payseur. “She basically imploded my life, and harassed me, and she gets to go on with her life with no repercussions, as if nothing happened? No way.”
Doyle is currently representing herself and seeking pro bono legal counsel. She drafted the legal documents in her new civil action with the help of a kind law professor she met through a free legal clinic at Seton Hall University and ChatGPT, she says.
Now with an eviction on her record, she says finding already scarce affordable housing is even harder. She’s hoping that a favorable judgment and monetary settlement springing from her new filing will help her and her family to “escape the headaches and hassle” of subsidized housing, and to buy a house of their own.
Seth Rosenstein, an attorney for Payseur and her real estate company, told Atlanta Black Star in an emailed statement, “As a matter of firm policy, we do not comment on the specifics of pending litigation. However, we are confident that our client will be vindicated as the legal process unfolds. The pleadings filed to date present an incomplete picture and omit extensive facts that are highly relevant and strongly rebut the allegations made.”
U.S. District Court Judge Brian R. Martinotti is scheduled to rule on Payseur’s motion to intervene and her proposed new complaint on August 18.
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