Attorney General Jay Jones announced a settlement in a fair housing case brought against David Merryman, called a “slumlord from hell” by one former tenant, who is serving 17 years in prison for wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and race-based interference with housing and employment.
Per the settlement, Merryman has to pay $2.25 million to his victims, is required to work with courts to eliminate millions of dollars of eviction filings and judgments from the records of his past tenants, and must sell all of his rental properties in Virginia within a year.
Probably obvious, he also had to agree to never be a landlord in the Commonwealth of Virginia again.
“Our friends, neighbors, communities, and families have the right to be treated with respect and dignity throughout the housing process, as guaranteed by the Virginia Fair Housing Law and the Fair Housing Act. Anyone found in violation of these laws will be held accountable by this office and justice will be achieved for tenants who face discrimination,” Jones said, in a statement highlighted in a release from his office.
Merryman, who was sentenced in 2024, owned more than 60 rental properties in Hampton and Newport News, and according to court documents, he regularly harassed his minority tenants with slurs, comments about slavery and death threats, and took advantage of COVID-19 rent-relief programs by using his tenants’ names and personal information without their consent and forging their signatures.
The COVID scheme enabled Merryman to obtain big money from state and federal relief programs without telling his tenants, then evicting those tenants that he’d exploited for unpaid rent.
The court documents tell us that Merryman primarily rented his properties, which were often in poor condition, some basically uninhabitable, to African American tenants with limited credit and housing options.
This was his leverage point, and he used it as his personal piggy bank; on top of the COVID fraud, Merryman would pocket large initial payments in the form of security deposits, prepaid rent, and other fees for his slums, and demand money up front for repairs to his properties that he never intended to improve, with the intention to evict his renters to be able to start the cycle over again.
The individual stories that came out in court were horrific.
One tenant made requests for necessary repairs to the home she was renting, to which Merryman repeatedly made racially derogatory responses – threatening at one point to turn the woman and her children into “potting soil.”
Another tenant regularly paid rent from 2015 until she was laid off from her job in 2021 during the pandemic after suffering medical problems resulting in her hospitalization. On May 10, 2021, per court documents, Merryman applied to the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development for $15,100 in rent relief benefits for her and forged her signature, all without her consent.
Despite obtaining those benefits, Merryman evicted her, citing her unpaid rent – and the woman lost all her belongings when Merryman sent a crew to remove them from her home and tow her car when she was hospitalized.
“We are in a new era of civil rights enforcement in the Commonwealth,” Jones said, pointing, without saying it directly, to the lack of action in this case from the office of his predecessor, the MAGA Republican Jason Miyares.
“Returning this office to the people means returning energy and talent to the cases that went neglected far too long,” Jones said. “The attorneys who first brought this case to court under my predecessor, former Attorney General Mark Herring — Helen Hardiman and Palmer Heenan — are back in this office leading efforts to safeguard the civil rights of all Virginians.
“Discriminatory harassment has no place in our Commonwealth and will play no role in the future we are creating for those who come after us,” Jones said.
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Chris Graham
