Restitution delivered for Virginia families in 6-year housing discrimination case

Damien and Angela Smith and their friends Amanda and Michael Mills said Wednesday they feel a sense of relief at the conclusion of their years-long housing discrimination case. Each couple has received nearly $420,000 in restitution, Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones announced this week

The families had retreated to a Smith Mountain Lake property in 2020, where they faced harassment and racially derogatory comments by owner Regina Smith. 

After a jury sided with the families in their case last year, Smith owed the families nearly $800,000. Smith’s 18-acre waterfront property has since been sold, facilitating the payments. 

The awards come after Turner failed to comply with multiple court orders and refused to pay damages following last year’s verdict. The Office of the Attorney General then initiated a special auction to sell her property and collect the court-ordered damages. Turner was also sentenced to 30 days in jail. 

Looking back on how the case began, Damien Smith, a Black man, said he’d been in the car when his white wife and their friends toured the site. Turner didn’t notice him.

“I told Angie ‘I’ll give it a try, but typically, you know, Black people in campgrounds in the South don’t mix,’” he explained. “I don’t think if (Turner) had seen me that night she would have let the sale go through.”

Amanda Mills said after the sale, Turner called her and expressed frustration at learning of Damien Smith’s race. She said wouldn’t have approved of the couples on her campground if she’d known, Mills recounted. 

Though Turner had initially seen the Smiths’ mixed-race son, she relayed to Amanda Mills that she’d assumed he was a “mistake from (Angie Smith’s) past.” 

“No child of any nationality, any race, is a mistake,” Amanda Mills said. “For someone to truly feel that way, so deep in their heart, it just shows how much room for improvement there is in this world.”

Hampton Roads tenants describe landlord’s abuse, retaliation after landmark fair housing settlement

The families said Turner pressured them to leave and refused to return their rental fees or allow them to sell their campers on site. 

“We ended up having to tear down decks and pull the camper out of there in order to get it sold for a much lesser value than what it was if it was on the water, and much less than what we paid for it,” Angela Smith explained. 

Turner’s comment about the Smith’s son disturbed the couples deeply and spurred the Smiths to file a complaint with the Virginia Fair Housing Board. 

Damien Smith was skeptical that it would yield justice but the case’s outcome represents the importance of “sticking to your guns,” he said. 

It’s arduous to pursue legal remedy for these types of wrongs, Helen Hardiman, a lawyer in the Office of the Attorney General, noted, adding that the rigorous process sometimes deters people from taking action. 

The Smiths and Mills had to make about a dozen court appearances over the years and continued to encounter Turner in that process. 

“(They) had to disrupt their lives and place themselves back in what I would imagine is pretty emotionally frustrating space to be in the same room with a woman who had discriminated against them all those years ago,” Hardiman said. 

The longrunning case, first undertaken by former Attorney General Mark Herring, continued by former Attorney General Jason Miyares, and now concluded through Jones, resulted in the state’s largest payout to individual complainants in the history of the state’s attorney general office and fair housing office. 

“Justice was slow here — delayed but not denied,” Hardiman said.