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The Eviction Kings Are Being Sued

Corporate landlord American Landmark admitted that its business model priced tenants out. Now, former tenants have filed a class-action lawsuit against the company.

Illustration by Tim Robinson.

In January of 2025, recalling the eviction that had made him homeless, Diron Kelly told me his corporate landlord had left him living through “a nightmare.”

He said American Landmark, owner of his Charlotte, North Carolina, apartment and some 30,000 others, had a “bully” business model—from raising his rent by some $400 while forcing him to pay fees for frivolous amenities to jumping at the chance to take him to court once his pockets ran dry. “They really messed everything up,” he said.

But starting last week, it’s now Kelly taking the real estate giant to court. On October 20, he filed a class-action lawsuit against the company in an attempt to prove that not only does its model—first revealed by The Nation and Type Investigations in a piece last year—violate North Carolina law, but that it has left thousands of similar “nightmares” in its wake.

Read our original American Landmark investigation

The Eviction Kings Thomas Birmingham

At stake are the likely millions of dollars that the suit alleges American Landmark illegally coerced out of current and former tenants like Kelly.

The lawsuit, filed by Halperin Petersen & Mikkilineni LLP, the North Carolina Justice Center, and Kelly Guzzo, PLC in the US District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, focuses on a state that has been an epicenter in American Landmark’s network of mega-complexes throughout the South. When I traveled to Charlotte last year, I learned that American Landmark had filed evictions against at least 450 residents over a six-month period, and my interviews with dozens of American Landmark tenants revealed how the company had engineered a system to price Kelly and his neighbors out.

Even American Landmark CEO Joseph Lubeck admitted when I spoke to him that the company’s “modeling” assumes that 45 percent of existing tenants will “move out” after American Landmark takes over: “a number of people are not going to be able to afford what we do.”

Kelly’s case, which is seeking additional plaintiffs, asks for restitution for any tenant who has lived in one of American Landmark’s roughly 3,000 apartments in the state since October 20, 2022. “During their tenancies,” the complaint reads, “Defendants have charged Plaintiffs thousands of dollars in unlawful, deceptive, and unfair fees.”

When reached by e-mail, Lubeck wrote, “American Landmark strongly denies all of the specious claims in the suit, which is clearly an attempt to extort money and rooted in antisemitism, like your previous coverage.”

According to the complaint, American Landmark weaponized mandatory “junk” fees to arbitrarily raise its tenants’ monthly costs by upwards of $100 per month. Kelly’s attorneys claim that American Landmark universally implements these fees—described as a “profit center”—in its North Carolina homes.

In 2025, 18 American Landmark tenants told me their first bill from the company surpassed what they believed they should have owed—thanks to the mandatory fees. Though Lubeck acknowledged at the time that he was “sure there are cases where people don’t know what they sign,” he told me that the fees were “disclosed up front and in writing.” In his e-mailed comment on the lawsuit, he again emphasized that “we provide full and fair value for all our residents and for all services, all of which are clearly spelled out and explained in their contracts and welcome packages.”

These underhanded fee structures are an epidemic for modern renters. As private-equity firms and large conglomerates take over more and more US real estate, tenants are losing out on hundreds of millions of dollars in junk fees every year, according to the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC). These fees, especially in cities like Charlotte, disproportionately burden Black and brown tenants. But a 2025 NCLC report found that states have begun pushing back, with at........

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