The Tony Award winner Wendell Pierce has alleged that he was denied a rental apartment in New York’s historically Black Harlem neighborhood because he is Black.
“Racism and bigots are real”, the actor posted on X this week. “There are those who will do anything to destroy life’s journey for Black folks. When you deny our personal experiences, you are as vile and despicable.”
The 58-year-old actor said that he felt “righteous anger” about his treatment.
“I’m on 2 TV series, ELSBETH and RAISING KANAN. I’m filming SUPERMAN. Two years ago, I finished the fourth season of JACK RYAN. Last year I finished a run on Broadway in DEATH OF A SALESMAN. Even with my proof of employment, bank statements and real estate holdings, a white apartment owner DENIED my application to rent the apartment…..in Harlem, of all places,” he wrote.
In an interview with CNN, Pierce went on to explain that he had taken a relative who recently graduated from Howard University apartment hunting “to make sure he got a decent apartment and I was backing him up”.
But even after offering the unnamed landlord a year’s rent in advance, he was denied on the technicality that as an actor he could not show “steady, consistent employment”.
“I realized the application was designed that way to be discriminatory,” Pierce said in the interview, explaining that he “wanted to show the damaging affects of when bigotry is memorialized in law”.
Pierce – who starred as the Baltimore police detective William “Bunk” Moreland in The Wire and as CIA deputy director James Greer in Jack Ryan – for four seasons, later said he had brought up the experience only “as an example of the insidious nature of bigotry”.
In May, New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, lit the Empire State Building to commemorate the 56th anniversary of the Big Apple’s Fair Housing Act and reaffirmed the state’s commitment to combatting housing discrimination.
Hochul said that New York “faces the most dire housing crisis in a generation” and that she was reaffirming the state’s “commitment to rooting out bias and discrimination in housing”.
Last year, the New York mayor, Eric Adams, pledged to crack down on landlords and brokers who reject apartment applicants based on how they pay the rent.
But the city has delayed the implementation of an enforcement plan and slashed funding for a program meant to stop housing discrimination.
According to Gothamist, there are roughly 11,000 households living in city shelters that qualify for rental assistance vouchers but cannot find apartments.
The comments from Pierce drew reaction online. One X user commented: “the denial of housing with your obvious qualifications was bad enough, but for this to happen in harlem is the icing on the cake. I’m sorry you’ve been so directly affected by this broken system.”
Pierce, a native of New Orleans, won a Tony award as a theatrical producer in 2012 for Clybourne Park. He was also nominated more recently for the best actor Tony and Laurence Olivier awards for his role in Death of a Salesman.
