A Kentucky landlord must sell his rentals over sex-for-rent claims

A landlord in Somerset, Kentucky has agreed to sell his rental properties and leave the business permanently, resolving a Justice Department lawsuit that accused him of demanding sexual favors from female tenants.

Danny T. Bell operated roughly 17 rental properties when the department sued in April 2023. Under the consent order he pays $140,000 in damages to affected tenants plus a $10,000 civil penalty, sells his properties including Eagle's Landing and Somerset Place Apartments, and agrees never to manage residential rentals again.

What the complaint alleged

The government's complaint described what it called a longstanding pattern going back to at least 2010. It alleged Bell offered to reduce or forgive rent in exchange for sexual favors, subjected tenants to unwanted touching and sexual advances, and threatened or started eviction proceedings against women who refused him.

Two tenants were described in detail, one covering roughly 2010 to 2015 and another 2019 to 2021, with allegations of repeated unwanted physical contact, sexual comments, and entering a tenant's home without notice. The department said the conduct caused physical harm, fear, anxiety and emotional distress, and that it was intentional and taken in reckless disregard of others' rights.

The case resolved by consent order rather than a trial verdict, so these remain allegations that were settled rather than findings proven in court.

This is a category, not an outlier

The part renters should take from this is that the federal government runs a whole program for exactly this conduct, and it isn't a small one. The Justice Department launched its Sexual Harassment in Housing Initiative in October 2017, and it has since filed 52 lawsuits and recovered more than $17 million for tenants.

The settlements range widely in size. A New Jersey landlord paid $4.5 million, landlords in Oklahoma City paid $1.25 million, and cases in Ohio and Connecticut have landed between $100,000 and $480,000.

What ties them together is who gets targeted. These cases overwhelmingly involve tenants who can't easily leave, which usually means low incomes, few local options and a landlord who controls whether they're housed at all. That leverage is the mechanism, and it's why the conduct clusters in smaller markets and cheaper housing instead of places where a tenant can just move.

Kentucky illustrates the trap. Rent in Owensboro is about $1,161 and in Bowling Green $1,258, which sounds manageable until you set it against local incomes of roughly $56,357 and $48,873. Cheap rent doesn't mean a tenant has spare cash for a deposit, a moving truck and a first month somewhere else, and a renter without that cushion is a renter who can't walk away.

What the law actually says

Sexual harassment by a landlord is illegal under the federal Fair Housing Act, which bars discrimination on the basis of sex in housing. That covers demanding sexual favors as a condition of renting, keeping a unit, or getting repairs, and it covers harassment severe enough to make a tenancy intolerable.

It applies whether or not you've got a written lease, whether or not you're behind on rent, and regardless of immigration status. A landlord who offers to forgive rent for sex is not making an offer, he's committing a federal housing violation.

Complaints go to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which investigates fair housing violations, or to the Justice Department's civil rights division. Both accept reports directly from tenants, and the Bell case began the same way many of these do, with tenants who reported it.

For the wider set of things worth watching before you sign, see our guide to landlord red flags.

Sources

• US Department of Justice, for the settlement announcement in the Kentucky case

• DOJ complaint filed April 2023, for the allegations described

• DOJ Sexual Harassment in Housing Initiative, for the case count and total recovered since October 2017

• RentDataNow Kentucky rent data, anchored to the Zillow Observed Rent Index, June 2026