BOCA RATON - Hardly a day goes by without doctors and nurses being hailed as heroes for working dangerous and mentally and emotionally exhausting hospital shifts caring for coronavirus patients.
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Greta Tremmel (right) with Bill Wright, Delray Beach, (left) protest along Camino Real outside the Boca View condos in Boca Raton Friday afternoon, May 1, 2020. Tremmel is trying to rent her apartment out to Jennifer Piraino, who is a nurse. Tremmel claims Boca View is rejecting Piraino’s application because she is a nurse. |
However, actively asking residents if
they have the virus has not been an issue - yet.
Neither Eric Estebanez, the founder of the property
management firm, Pointe Management Group in Delray Beach,
nor the condo association president, Diana Kuka, responded
to requests for comment.
Piraino says she left her rental application with Pointe
Management Group on Friday, April 24. The following Monday,
she got a call telling her to pick up the paperwork and the
$100 money order she dropped off for a background check.
When she asked why, she was told she was rejected “just with
everything going on.”
The fact that the money order wasn’t cashed suggests to her
that Pointe Management Group – which touts its “aggressive
management style” on its website -- rejected her without
even doing a background check, Piraino said.
There is no other reason than her job, Piraino said, that
she and her boyfriend, who is a civil engineer, would be
denied. “We both have good incomes,” she said.
About the same time Piraino submitted her application, the
condo unit’s owner, Tremmel, said she got a phone call from
Kuka, the association president, inquiring about her
prospective tenant. Tremmel says she informed Kuka that
Piraino is an ICU nurse.
“No, we can’t have a nurse in this building,” was Kuka’s
response, according to Tremmel. Kuka hasn’t spoken to her
since, she added. She then phoned Estebanez, who said,
“We’re only doing what the board told us to do,” Tremmel
contends.
Tremmel filed a complaint on behalf of herself and Piraino
with the Office of Equal Opportunity of Palm Beach County,
which, among other things, investigates violations of fair
housing laws.
Kuka and Estebanez might contend that if they barred Piraino
from renting at Boca View it was because of a desire to
provide a safe living environment for other residents.
Federal fair housing laws prohibit discrimination on the
basis of seven protected classes – race, color, religion,
national origin, sex, disability and familial status. None
of those appears to apply to Piraino, but federal law also
protects people who are “associated with” someone with a
disability.
Health care workers elsewhere also have spurred fear. Travel
nurses who work for staffing agencies on short-term
assignments have been abruptly evicted from their homes
across the country, according to an article in the Daily
Beast. And nurses and other health care workers have been
physically attacked and threatened in countries that include
Mexico, the Philippines and India because of fears that they
are spreading the coronavirus.
Piraino says she understands concerns about residents’
safety, given her occupation. She is trained to take
precautions when treating COVID-19 patients, and knows who
has the virus beforehand, she said. She has the equipment
she needs to be safe. She added that she has tested negative
for the virus.
Piraino said she thinks there is more risk visiting a
supermarket or a pharmacy where one doesn’t know who might
have the virus, and wears far less protective gear.
“I feel the unknown is riskier than the known,” Piraino
said. “What you can’t see is the problem. I feel like more
knowledge about it is helpful to everybody."