Woman sues over age restriction at Sun City complex

Grace Leong

Wednesday, Oct. 13, 1999 | 10:51 a.m.

A woman sued Sun City Summerlin Community Association, Del Webb Communities Inc. and Del Webb Corp., alleging she was illegally evicted from the Summerlin home she inherited from her parents because of an allegedly arbitrary 55-year age restriction.

In a District Court suit, the plaintiff, Carol Rogers, who was 49 when she was evicted in October 1997 and had been a Summerlin resident since September 1995, alleged she was unfairly singled out for eviction out of the more than 250 Summerlin residents who were below 55 but were allowed to inherit homes and remain as residents, regardless of their relationship to the deceased.

Other defendants include the association's executive director William Diveley, board president Edward Barkin, compliance manager Barbara Thomas, Del Webb Corp.'s Andrew Miller and two Las Vegas men, Richard Ondick and Jack Coleman.

Rogers said the defendants, who claim they observed the Housing For Older Persons Act of 1995 (HOPA), told her that all Sun City Communities are age-restricted communities that require an occupied home to have at least one person aged 55 years or older.

Del Webb was one of the first companies to anticipate the senior housing market boom in the Valley. It opened its first age-restricted community for people aged 55 or older in Sun City Summerlin in 1988.

Rogers accused the defendants of deceptive and arbitrary trade practices, alleging they had intentionally misled and deceived seniors into buying homes that their heirs could lose based on their marital status, heir status or some "arbitrary and illegal rule or restriction unknown at the time of purchase."

She also alleged she was forced to sell her home at 3016 Morningridge Drive last May at $165,000 instead of its appraised value of $182,000 because she was allegedly threatened with property foreclosure and Ondick and Coleman's alleged "stalking, harassment, trespassing and accusations of health and safety violations."

Rogers said the defendants had allegedly demanded entry into her property and allegedly used surveillance until she finally sought and won temporary restraining orders against Ondick and Coleman and a "No Trespass" order against the Association.

She also alleged the defendants violated HOPA when they claimed they allowed "under age purchase and inheritance" and occupancy of the homes of the deceased resident only for spouses of the deceased.

"Sun City makes its own laws and does its own adjudication as it sees fit. There is little or no consistency in their policy. Nowhere in any documents that my parents signed for in the purchase of that home did it say that a blood heir under 55 could not reside in their home," Rogers said.

"If the court rules in the favor of Sun City, then all the rights of the elderly residents' heirs to live in their homes will be wiped out by the homeowners association," she said.

She alleged the defendants also violated HOPA when they failed to seek the opinion of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the regulatory agency responsible for the enforcement of HOPA, as to whether the eviction of heirs was lawful under HOPA, federal or state law. She claimed there is no provision for the eviction of persons under HOPA.

"We believe these allegations are false. The age qualification for our communities is clearly spelled out in our public offering statement. The age restriction is also a deed restriction on the home. So it's in the closing document of the sale they signed," said Sean Patrick, Del Webb Communities Inc.'s director of public relations.

"What the association is doing is consistent with HOPA. HOPA requires at least 80 percent of the Sun City residents to be over 55 years to define it as an age-restricted community. We have gone beyond that," he said.

"The Sun City Summerlin public offering document initially stated that all 100 percent of Sun City residents have to be over 55 years in order to have the right to reside. We would be surprised that someone bought into an age-restricted community and did not know it was age-restricted," he said.