Whistleblower trial: Charlotte housing authority denied help to elderly, disabled
They filled out their applications and went to class with the right forms, notebooks and the hope that they would finally be able to own a home in Charlotte.
Then they were ghosted and ignored.
For years, disabled and elderly people who applied for help from Charlotte’s federally-funded housing authority didn’t know what they did wrong or why they stopped hearing from the city program that had built their hopes so high.
A lawsuit filed by a whistleblower inside Charlotte’s Housing Authority, which is now called Inlivian, unveiled answers. Their applications were deleted, according to testimony given in Charlotte’s federal court last week.
Tonya Lightner, the former coordinator for the public housing authority’s homeownership assistance program, in 2020 raised concerns that the agency was violating federal law and regulations issued by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Then her work environment became hostile, according to her 2023 lawsuit.
A weeklong trial on her employment lawsuit ended Monday with the seven-person jury awarding Lightner $2.34 million in damages from the housing agency. Testimony revealed more about complaints that Charlotte’s housing authority, under Monica Nathan, discriminated against applicants, violated HUD regulations and gave preferential treatment to people tied to Nathan.
Discrimination in Inlivian, Charlotte housing
Lightner worked for the housing agency’s nonprofit branch that included housing assistance programs for renting and homebuying.
The program got 15 vouchers to give out a year and was meant to help low income people purchase a home by going through courses, getting a certificate of completion and working with counselors to improve their finances. Applicants had to pass a criminal background check, make a minimum yearly income of $25,000 and, among other things, have an acceptable credit score.
Lightner in her lawsuit alleged her boss, Nathan, asked her to keep track of housing assistance applications in an Excel sheet instead of the HUD approved database that sorts them chronologically based on timestamps. Nathan also told her to get rid of some applications that otherwise met requirements.
Eventually, Lightner spotted a trend: disabled and elderly applicants were deleted, and people who used realtors or lenders who were in Nathan’s sorority were given priority.
When she reported this, Nathan retaliated and created a hostile work environment that eventually ousted Lightner from the job she held for 16 years, according to the lawsuit.
Nathan was fired in 2023 after an investigation into allegations of mismanagement, according to testimony.
Witness testimony
Throughout the week, jurors heard from applicants who said they met every requirement needed for the program, completed the courses and had the credit score needed to purchase a home, but then never moved forward.
Several, including Ruby Alexander, said they struggled to get in contact with people at Inlivian about their applications. When Alexander met with Lightner at the Inlivian offices in 2019, she was told there was nothing they could do for her. “I was so devastated because I worked so hard,” she said.
Jeffrey Young, another applicant, said the process took so long, and he didn’t hear back from Inlivian, so he was forced to purchase a home with a Veterans Affairs loan or risk having his pre-approved mortgage expire and end up homeless.
The Inlivian program was meant to help with his mortgage, but because the program didn’t work out, he said he’s now two months behind on his payments and at risk of homelessness again.
Jurors also heard from former and current Inlivian employees who, like Lightner, alleged a hostile and retaliatory work environment.
Some, including Lightner, pointed to supervisors like Nathan as the source of this hostility and retaliation. One former employee, Siera Tillman, said she was fired after filing a complaint against her supervisor.
Nathan and Inlivian’s lawyer, Jeremy Stephenson, argued that it was “absolutely preposterous” to argue Nathan retaliated against Lightner by requiring trainings and issuing a verbal warning. And on Lightner’s last day, he said in his closing arguments, Nathan brought donuts and hugged Lightner goodbye.
Lightner’s lawyer, in her rebuttal, cautioned the jury not to let Stephenson “minimize what happened.” Deleting the applications violated federal law, Shayla Richberg said, and that constitutes a hostile work environment. Lightner also reported having panic attacks and post-traumatic stress after she reported the problems.
“My grandson is nonverbal,” she told The Charlotte Observer. “I would never want someone to mistreat him.”
Lightner said she was “thankful for the good man above” and relieved that “someone actually finally heard me.”
Jury awards millions in whistleblower retaliation case
As the jury returned its verdict in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, Lightner cried and hugged Richberg.
The jury found Nathan subjected Lightner to a hostile work environment and constructively discharged her but ruled she did not retaliate against Lightner. The jury also found the housing authority, Inlivian, was negligent when it kept employing Nathan despite her alleged shortcomings as a manager.
District Judge Max Cogburn Jr. will later hear motions over whether the payment of over $2.3 million the jury wants should be issued.
In Cogburn’s courtroom, Tawanna White cried, too. Hers was one of the deleted applications. She served as a witness in Lightner’s trial.
“I wouldn’t have known this was happening to other people if it wasn’t for Mrs. Lightner,” White, 47, told The Charlotte Observer. “She’s my hero.”
White, whose keratoconus caused her to be legally blind since the 1990s, said she hopes the program will “right the wrongs” it committed against her and the other witnesses.
“They’ve made it too hard for us to get out of the system,” she said. “I don’t want to rent anymore when I could have a mortgage... I could be building generational wealth.”
Richberg told the Observer she hopes the verdict “creates some serious conversation for each and every one” of the affected applicants. She said it was important to detail the applicants experiences and call them as witnesses to prove that Lightner’s claims were true: she was forced to work in a place that asked her to break the law.
As Lightner and Richberg filed into the courthouse elevator to go down to the lobby one last time, members of the jury filed by.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” a mustachioed juror said to Lightner before the doors dinged closed.
