Largest landlord in the US accused of civil rights violations

Greystar, the largest owner and manager of apartments in the US, systematically flouts local laws designed to make housing affordable to the poor, according to civil rights complaints filed with authorities in six states and the District of Columbia.

The complaints – filed this week with government agencies in California, Hawaii, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Virginia and Washington DC – accuse Greystar of 114 violations of state and DC fair housing laws. They allege that the company refuses to accept federal housing choice vouchers (also known as Section 8) in places that require landlords to accept them.

“We have never encountered a landlord that operates with such brazen contempt and hostility toward the rule of law as Greystar,” Aaron Carr, executive director of the Housing Rights Initiative, said in a statement. “… As the largest landlord in America, Greystar should be setting the standard of best practices for the nation, not systematically rejecting legitimate prospective tenants.”

Carr’s group and a national law firm, Cohen Milstein, submitted the complaints and publicly shared recordings of calls made to Greystar-run buildings by undercover testers posing as potential tenants with vouchers. At every building, the group says, Greystar staff either refused to accept vouchers or imposed unlawful conditions on voucher use.

In a statement, Greystar did not address the specifics of the complaints but said it is “committed to fair housing practices in everything we do” and provides related training to staff.

As of December, the company operated more than 1m units of housing in the US, including roughly 235,000 in the jurisdictions where the complaints were filed, according to Yardi Matrix data analyzed by the Private Equity Stateholder Project.

The allegations come less than a month after a Guardian investigation reported that tenants in Greystar-run buildings face a mass of fees drawn from a menu of 125 different add-on charges. Lawsuits currently seeking class-action status in multiple states allege Greystar charges inflated or illegal fees.

In 2025, Greystar agreed to a $50m settlement to resolve a federal class action alleging it colluded with other landlords to raise rents and reached a $24m settlement in a Federal Trade Commission case alleging it gouged tenants with hidden fees.

Greystar did not admit wrongdoing in connection with those settlements and has said that the claims in the pending class actions are implausible and factually deficient.