Wilshire Apartments

Black potential tenants who just wanted a decent place to live were routinely turned away at the Trump family’s Queens housing complexes and others. Housing activists and equal housing organizations took note, and in 1973 Trump Management was sued by the Justice Department for discrimination. Some of those tenants who stood firm remember the indignities all too well. The New York Times took a look at the early days of the Trump empire, when Donald's father, Fred C. Trump, built and managed middle-income residential complexes like the Wilshire Apartments in Jamaica Estates, Queens. A former employee of the elder Trump tells the Times that when receiving applications from potential tenants who happened to be black he was told, "Take the application and put it in a drawer and leave it there."
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