George Wilborn, the famed co-host of the popular Michael Baisden Show, has filed a $100 million lawsuit against a Chicago couple who refused to sell him a home because of the color of his skin.
As previously reported, Wilborn and his wife were attempting to buy a $1.7 million home from Daniel and Adrienne Sabbia, a white couple.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development filed a complaint on behalf of Wilborn however after an investigator told them that Daniel Sabba declined to sign the contract because he’d “rather not sell to an African American.”
Now Wilborn and his wife Peytyn have officially filed a $100 million lawsuit in federal court for the discrimination they faced trying to buy the five-bedroom home in the city’s Bridgeport neighborhood.
George And Peytyn Wilborn (Brian Jackson/Sun-Times)
According to the Chicago-SunTimes, Bridgeport has been known for hostility to Blacks and when asked why he’d want to live there, Wilborn replied,
“I didn’t care where the home was. It was a specific type of house that my wife and I felt that we had earned the right to live in…It just happened to be in Bridgeport.”
The Wilborns’ offer to the couple was reportedly the highest they’d received in two years.
Rather than sell the home to the Wilborns, the Sabbias took it off the market only to put it back on in March with an asking price of $1.799 million.
Wilborn’s attorney has since spoken out on his behalf saying,
“This is the year 2010, and to go through what they’ve had to go through, to suffer the mental anguish they’ve had to deal with because they were discriminated against in a way that nobody should have to deal with in this day and age. They were discriminated against in the worst way.”
