A North Texas homeowners association now faces two federal lawsuits alleging that it tried to kick out hundreds of Black residents who rely on government housing vouchers to pay their rent, and subjected them to racial harassment and intimidation.
The harassment included posts on unofficial social media sites for the Town of Providence Village, a suburban neighborhood of single-family homes north of Dallas, in which Black residents were called “ghetto,” “wild animals,” and “lazy entitled leeching TR@SH,” and blamed for crime and other perceived problems.
According to a federal lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of Texas in April, one such post included a photo of a Black man with a rope around his neck, with the caption “This one is not coming back tomorrow.”
Other threatening posts were directed at female voucher tenants, including one that said, “get your section 8 asses out of town now bitches [explosion emoji] and don’t let the door hit you in your fat ass mouths!”
The racial hostility on display in such posts ramped up when the Providence Homeowners Association (PHOA) proposed new rules in 2021 to address a perception by its board of directors that the number of rental units in their community was growing and that voucher-holding renters were causing an increase in crime that could impact property values.
In fact, what was increasing in the Providence HOA community at the time was the number and concentration of Black residents, the lawsuits say.
Providence Village, which has about 9,000 residents, has grown more diverse in recent years, with the share of white homeowners falling from 92% in 2018 to 77% in 2022, reported the Dallas Morning News.
As of 2022, the 2,250 households making up the Providence HOA were 74% white and 14% Black, and 66% were owners and 34% were renters, the complaint says. Only 4% of the community’s households used vouchers, and among those voucher households, 93% were Black, and 94% were headed by females.
The PHOA board members and other homeowners in the town began focusing their concerns on renters using housing vouchers around July 2021 after an altercation at the community basketball court between two teenage boys — one Black and one white — that led to the arrest of the Black teenager, whom many assumed belonged to a voucher family, the lawsuit says.
After the incident, the PHOA hired a private security company to patrol common areas of the neighborhood, and installed security cameras on the basketball court and other recreational areas, with signs indicating the areas were under surveillance.
And chatter in the town’s social media groups became filled with posts antagonistic to voucher holders, such as one stating, “You ever thought maybe some of us don’t want to live amongst ghetto poverty crime ridden mentality people?”
The riled-up contributors included PHOA board members, including one who wrote, “it’s called Section 8,” then added, “It seems like the neighborhood is plagued with convicts, GET OUT!!!”
In the fall of 2021 the board and some homeowners began working on ways to restrict the ability of homeowners to rent their property to voucher holders, despite being warned by the mayor that, “Fair housing makes it illegal to restrict,” the complaint says.
The board worked with PHOA’s property manager, Cody Watson of FirstService Residential, on steps they could take to limit voucher-holders in their neighborhood. Watson allegedly advised the board that he and FirstService also thought such actions would be illegal.
Nevertheless, over the next few months Watson and board together drafted new rental rules that said no rental home could be publicly financed or subsidized, limited owners to one rental property, and required owners to live in the home for 24 months before renting it out. The rules stated that owners could be charged $300 per week for failing to comply with these rules.
When presenting the proposed rules, which required a majority of property owners to approve an amendment to a PHOA governing document, board president Jennifer Dautrich discussed property maintenance and crime in the general area, the lawsuit says, but did not provide data that was specific to the Providence HOA community or that connected such issues to voucher holders.
The amendment required 1,127 votes to pass, and PHOA board members and other homeowners lobbied hard for it for four months by going door to door asking HOA members to cast their votes, as well as daily reminding people to vote on the amendment via email and social media.
By June 1, 2022 they had the votes, and the board held a special open meeting to announce the amendment had passed. It then promptly used its new authority to approve the rules barring homeowners from renting to people receiving government assistance.
On June 8, 2022, several residents who opposed the amendment gathered in a park by a lake to discuss the vote. A pro-amendment resident surreptitiously photographed the group, which included children, and another resident posted the photo to social media with the caption, “Here’s a great pic depicting the very F—king Idiots that helped to Ruin our lovely town of Providence Village!!”
With the rules enacted, landlords in Providence began telling voucher tenants that they had to move immediately, setting off a wave of panic among tenants and leading to frantic searches for alternative housing, the complaint says. Several families moved out.
The HOA policy threatened to displace more than 170 families from the majority-white neighborhood, the Texas Tribune reported.
Then on June 30, 2022 the board announced that current voucher holders could remain until their leases expired, but not beyond twelve months. This was followed by an agreement with HUD on August 5, 2022 staying enforcement of the rules.
But voucher tenants continued to leave Providence Village due to the uncertainty and hostility they faced, the complaint says. At least 19 voucher households have moved away since the new rules passed.
A year later, on June 18, 2023, Texas passed a state law barring associations from restricting property owners’ choice of tenants based on their source of income, which became effective on Sept. 1, 2023.
In response, the board sent out a letter to residents stating they “will continue to fight for you by searching for alternative ways to ensure the integrity of our neighborhood.”
During the summer and fall of 2023, racial tensions related to voucher holders were stoked by protests led by the National Justice Party, a white nationalist organization, which posted fliers outside Providence Village that said, “an overwhelming majority of Section 8 recipients are composed of Black Americans” who bring “unimaginable violence.”
The board issued a statement that it had “no affiliation with this protest” and that it “does not condone or support any actions by any type of hate group.”
But HOA members continued slamming Section 8 “riff raff” on social media, and the board kept looking for new ways to limit renters relying on government assistance, the lawsuit says.
In May of 2024, the board adopted new rules that rescinded the now unlawful restriction on renting to voucher holders, but retained the limit of one rental property per owner. Because most voucher holders in Providence Village rented from a few large landlords, the one-rental-per-owner rule would in practice have a similar result as the prior outright ban, the complaint argues.
Black residents who had already been forced out or were afraid of losing their homes, along with landlords and other residents opposed to the rules responded by filing a flurry of 53 complaints with HUD (the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development).
In January 2025, HUD issued its determination finding reasonable cause to believe that PHOA and FirstService had violated the federal Fair Housing Act by discriminating because of race and color by making a dwelling unavailable because of a protected characteristic, and by failing to take corrective action when Black residents were harassed.
HUD said that the rules “predominantly and disproportionately impacted people who are Black. Nearly all of those targeted by PHOA’s efforts are Black. … The Board and other residents knew that by targeting voucher-holders they would be targeting the town’s Black residents, and they acted on this knowledge.”
HUD noted that the HOA and property manager provided three justifications for excluding voucher holders: crime, maintenance and property values. But they provided “no comprehensive sources of information to show these to be real problems —let alone problems caused by voucher holders.”
In 2023, the HOA board said in a statement that its homeowners had expressed concerns about “their ability to continue to afford the property taxes for their homes in this community as a result of Section 8 housing being steeply overvalued by investors,” the Texas Tribune reported.
The lawsuit by seven current and former Providence HOA residents states that the average market value of homes in Providence Village was on a steady upward trajectory at the time: $234,922 in 2020; $246,174 in 2021; $308,463 in 2022; and $364,393 in 2023, according to Denton County Appraisal District Records.
HUD further observed that local housing authorities prohibit giving vouchers to tenants involved in violent or drug-related activity or other criminal activity, and that voucher tenants, who undergo criminal background checks before their applications are approved, will lose their vouchers if engaged in such activity.
The federal housing agency also found that from the lead-up to the rules enactment through its aftermath, residents directed aggressive and threatening posts at voucher holders. It cited one post which said, “Back in the day, when a community didn’t like someone, they banned (sic) together to make said person’s life a living hell to the point they left.” And another in which a resident threatened, “they might just leave in a coroner’s wagon!!” and “kids will get SHOT.”
Despite being aware of such conduct, neither the PHOA Board nor FirstService did anything meaningful to address or correct the intimidation and harassment, HUD concluded.
HUD referred the case to the U.S. Department of Justice for further litigation, but in February the agency withdrew the case with no explanation, noted the Dallas Morning News. Housing advocates said the withdrawal could signal a rollback of civil rights enforcement at the agency under President Donald Trump and HUD Secretary Scott Turner, a Trump appointee who is from Texas.
Providence Village’s Black residents and other “aggrieved” parties are pressing on in federal court, along with McKinney Housing Authority, which filed a separate lawsuit on May 2.
Both lawsuits challenge the homeowners association’s rental rules as violating federal fair housing and civil rights law, and seek monetary damages and court injunctions to force Providence HOA and FirstService to remedy its “illegal, discriminatory conduct.”
The lawsuit filed on behalf of Dewanna Johnson and six other current and former Black residents seeks a jury trial to determine compensatory damages for lost income and emotional distress, as well as punitive damages.
Some of the plaintiffs were forced to move out of the community they had known for years and said they had difficulty finding new landlords that would accept housing vouchers, the lawsuit says. Others lost wages and jobs during the transition. Several had to hastily remove their children from preferred schools and place them in new schools in the middle of the school year, which was “disruptive and stressful.”
Johnson could not find a new landlord to lease a home to her with her voucher despite trying for four months, the lawsuit says. She felt like she was “living in hell” due to the ongoing racial hostility towards voucher tenants in the PHOA, and said she does not allow her children to go to the pool or park or use other neighborhood amenities.
The plaintiffs in both cases want the court to end the PHOA’s current rental restrictions and to stop them from enacting future restrictions that violate the Fair Housing Act (FHA) or discriminate on the basis of race or color. They also seek a court order requiring the PHOA and FirstService officials and employes to engage in training on how to comply with the FHA and to prevent future discriminatory housing practices, including monitoring social media sites for racial hostility and harassing statements.
McKinney Housing Authority (MHA), which administers HUD funds for people it refers to housing providers, cited among its damages costs of about $20,000 related to the new rules, including the time and expense required to coordinate numerous relocations of residents in a short period and to meet with residents to help them understand how to comply with the rules and to connect them to legal aid clinics.
But McKinney said the greater damage was to its mission, which is to serve the housing needs of low- to moderate-income families by increasing the availability of decent, safe and affordable housing. PHOA and FirstService engaged in a “sustained campaign of discrimination” through the adoption of residential leasing rules that effectively excluded MHA tenants, all of whom are Black women, from participating in the housing voucher program, the lawsuit said.
The housing authority seeks similar compensatory and injunctive relief demanded by the individual plaintiffs and noted in its complaint that “Monetary damages alone cannot compensate for loss of civil rights, ongoing fear and intimidation, or the destruction of racial integration and community stability.”
McKinney Housing Authority asks for “a permanent injunction to protect the civil rights of residents and to ensure compliance with fair housing laws.”
Providence Homeowners Association and FirstService Residential, named as defendants in both lawsuits, have 60 days after being served with the complaint to file an answer, or until June 24.
Asked for a comment about the lawsuit, a spokesperson for FirstService responded in an emailed statement that it “denies the allegations and remains committed to operating with fairness, integrity, and compliance with the law.”
Attorneys for Providence Homeowners Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Atlanta Black Star.
