{"id":9534,"date":"2025-06-24T02:01:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-24T02:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/9534\/"},"modified":"2025-06-24T02:01:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T02:01:09","slug":"jacksonvilles-jwb-rental-homes-settles-beef-over-military-tenant-fees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/9534\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacksonville&#8217;s JWB Rental Homes settles beef over military tenant fees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;right:0;bottom:0;width:100%;height:100%;z-index:2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/84075850007-militaryspouseoftheyear.png\"\/><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"vidplayicon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/appservices\/universal-web\/universal\/icons\/icon-play-alt-white.svg\" alt=\"play\" style=\"height:40px;margin:auto 18px auto 27px;width:40px\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Jacksonville woman becomes national military hero, see her video<\/p>\n<p>Five years after her husband&#8217;s death, Jacksonville&#8217;s Verda Smith has escaped grief, found her dream job and been honored by Hire Heroes USA.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>JWB Rental Homes will pay $25,000 to settle a federal complaint alleging illegal fees charged to military tenants breaking leases due to relocation orders.<\/li>\n<li>The company will also compensate affected servicemembers $39,000.<\/li>\n<li>JWB denies wrongdoing, attributing the issue to administrative errors affecting less than 1% of military move-outs.<\/li>\n<li>The settlement avoids further legal proceedings, and JWB has updated its procedures.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Jacksonville property manager <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jwbrentalhomes.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">JWB Rental Homes<\/a> will pay a $25,000 fine to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/25981831-jwb-doj-settlement-062325\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">settle<\/a> a federal complaint it charged military tenants illegal fees if they broke leases when they were ordered to move, the U.S. Department of Justice said June 23.<\/p>\n<p>The company, organized as JWB Property Management LLC, will also pay $39,000 to servicemembers who were charged the fees, DOJ said in an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-mdfl\/pr\/jacksonville-property-management-company-pay-compensation-and-penalties-imposing\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">announcement<\/a> about the settlement.<\/p>\n<p>The government argued JWB violated the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.consumerfinance.gov\/consumer-tools\/educator-tools\/servicemembers\/the-servicemembers-civil-relief-act-scra\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Servicemembers Civil Relief Act<\/a>, a law that suspends some normal civilian requirements to let military members focus on their duties.<\/p>\n<p>The company denied violating anything, however, and the settlement said the two sides agreed only \u201cto avoid the delay, uncertainty, inconvenience and expenses of protracted legislation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"related-link\"><strong style=\"margin-right:3px\">More: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jacksonville.com\/story\/business\/briefs\/2024\/11\/15\/new-jwb-homestep-program-offers-home-purchase-assistance\/76263314007\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">JWB launches program to assist with home buying. How will it help Jacksonville renters?<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Justice officials said bringing the case reflected the government\u2019s support for servicemembers and their families.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur military families already shoulder the burden of military-ordered moves and deployments,\u201d Harmeet K. Dhillon, said assistant attorney general over Justice\u2019s Civil Rights Division, said in a \u00a0DOJ release. \u201cWe will not allow them to be penalized by landlords for answering the call of duty for service.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-mdfl\/pr\/attorney-general-pam-bondi-appoints-gregory-w-kehoe-interim-united-states-attorney\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Gregory Kehoe<\/a>, U.S. attorney for Florida\u2019s Middle District, which includes Jacksonville, said in the same release that \u201cour servicemembers make tremendous sacrifices to protect the rights and freedoms of our citizens and we will combat all forms of discrimination against them to help ensure that they are able to fulfill their military obligations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Times-Union news partner First Coast News <a href=\"https:\/\/www.firstcoastnews.com\/article\/news\/local\/jwb-property-management-servicemembers-civil-relief-act\/77-16acc94d-e366-4bf9-af06-f0e85dfe7e9b\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">quoted<\/a> JWB Real Estate Companies founder and President <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jacksonville.com\/story\/business\/real-estate\/2012\/07\/01\/jacksonvilles-biggest-homebuyers-are-now-investors\/15862251007\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Alex Sifakis<\/a> as saying JWB \u201ctakes special care to serve our military and veteran residents with the respect they deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sifakis said the company \u201cidentified administrative errors within our system that could have led to incorrect fees for a small group of military residents\u201d but that they represented less than 1% of military move-outs, the station quoted Sifakis saying.<\/p>\n<p>He said the company has updated its internal controls to prevent the situation happening again.<\/p>\n<p>JWB Rental managed about 5,800 rental homes in Jacksonville in 2024, the Times-Union reported at that time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacksonville woman becomes national military hero, see her video Five years after her husband&#8217;s death, Jacksonville&#8217;s Verda Smith&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,10554,10561,10556,413,281,10562,3040,614,3188,723,10555,421,7310,8142,3228,4630,3628,1802,451,1539,450,457,10558,10565,8659,10564,10557,10563,10560,10559,10566,125,10495,1439,94,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-9534","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-armed","10":"tag-armed-forces","11":"tag-civil","12":"tag-civil-rights","13":"tag-court","14":"tag-court-settlement","15":"tag-department","16":"tag-estate","17":"tag-fl","18":"tag-florida","19":"tag-forces","20":"tag-homes","21":"tag-jacksonville","22":"tag-justice","23":"tag-law","24":"tag-legal","25":"tag-management","26":"tag-military","27":"tag-negative","28":"tag-of","29":"tag-overall","30":"tag-overall-negative","31":"tag-property","32":"tag-property-management","33":"tag-real","34":"tag-real-estate-law","35":"tag-rental","36":"tag-rental-homes","37":"tag-rentals","38":"tag-residential","39":"tag-residential-rentals","40":"tag-rights","41":"tag-settlement","42":"tag-u-s","43":"tag-u-s-department-of-justice","44":"tag-united-states","45":"tag-united-states-of-america","46":"tag-unitedstates","47":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","48":"tag-us","49":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}