A landlord in Richmond, Virginia, launched into a full-on racist rant against his then-tenant after she requested repairs to her home.
An audio recording obtained by station WWBT captured property owner Dean Parsons making several derogatory remarks and cursing his tenant, single mother Winter Whittaker.
Winter Whittaker said she feared for her life after her landlord’s racist rant, especially since he had keys to the home she was renting from him. (WWBT / video screenshot)
“I don’t give a good goddamn,” Parsons says in the clip. “You’re just another dumb ass n—–r I got to go to court with, and I go to court every damn day with them.”
Whittaker, who paid $850 in monthly rent to stay at the home, had made repeated complaints about the less-than-desirable living conditions at the East End property. She said Parsons only provided temporary fixes to the issues, however, so she had to keep contacting him.
“Rodents, fleas. It’d leak constantly, in my bedroom, in my living room,” she told the station. “The hole inside the house, it was leaking from the gutters. That was the final straw for me.”
“He was like ‘If you don’t like it, move,’ ” Whittaker recalled. “I was like ‘OK, it’s easy for you to say move.’ “
The mother of two said she was in fear for her life after Parson’s hate-filled tirade, considering he had keys to the property she shared with her kids.
“She would call me and say ‘I’m afraid to stay here at night. I don’t know what he’s going to do,’” Whittaker’s attorney, Helen Hardiman, explained.
Whittaker told WWBT this isn’t the first time she’s had issues with Parsons, and said the landlord had been giving her trouble since she moved in.
“I moved here and then five days later, he called me the first ‘B word,’ ” she said. “For five months, I continuously was abused with the ‘B word’ every time I called him about a complaint. He was like ‘You complain too much. You can get the hell out of my house.’ “
As their feud heated up, Whittaker decided to record her next call to the property owner.
“I need the ceilings fixed,” she said during their phone conversation.
“I didn’t hear a good God damn thing you said because you don’t mean s–t to me,” Parsons shoots back. “Get the hell out of my goddamn house! The quicker the better!”
Whittaker tells him she doesn’t have to leave until her lease is up, to which Parsons says: “B—h, shut the f–k up and leave me alone. You’ ain’t nothing but a goddamn tenant.”
Whittaker pressed the landlord to make the necessary repairs to her home, but not before she dubbed him a “goddamn slumlord.”
For Hardiman, this case raised concerns that Virginia’s fair housing laws were being violated — deliberately.
“Certain demographics of people are targeted by certain landlords who know that they can take advantage of these kinds of tenants,” the attorney said.
Rather than taking their battle to court, Whittaker and her lawyer reached a mutual agreement with Parsons to settle their differences, WWBT reported. No lawsuit was filed and Parsons, who “manages 250 single-family homes and 125 apartments” across the Richmond area, according to Hardiman, wasn’t found liable for any wrongdoing.
Whittaker finished her lease and is now enjoying life in a new home with her two kids.
Watch more in the video below.
