LOCKPORT — A Lockport landlord paid $5,500 in damages to a white woman who accused him of telling her to move out of an apartment because she had a biracial daughter.

The landlord last week accused the woman of lying about him and said he only settled the case “to protect my assets.”

The settlement did not constitute an admission of wrongdoing, according to Housing Opportunities Made Equal, known as HOME, a Buffalo not-for-profit agency that represented Kimberly Peterman, 28.

Peterman said Friday that in July 2008, she tried to rent an apartment at 212 Church St., a three-apartment dwelling owned by Jeremy and Palma Kress.

Peterman said she agreed to pay $300 a month in rent and signed a lease. She moved in on a Friday, and by Sunday night, she was moving out again.

The reason, she charged, was that Jeremy Kress found out she had a 4-year-old daughter by an African-American boyfriend.

She said Friday that Kress never met the boyfriend, who helped her move in.

“He canceled the lease. He said I needed to make other arrangements,” Peterman said. “He said he didn’t want black people on his property. He said he’d had trouble with them.”

“She moved out of her own accord,” said Kress, 67. He called Peterman “street wise” and accused her of having a criminal record.

The Buffalo News has reported two past arrests of Peterman, one in 2008 accusing her of possessing a stolen credit card, and the other in 2007, accusing her of overcharging customers at a drugstore where she was a cashier and pocketing the overcharges.

“This was without a doubt one of the most excruciatingly painful experiences of my life,” Kress said. “I’ve rented to black people. I am renting to black people.”

HOME filed a complaint against Kress with the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which referred it to the state Division of Human Rights.

The agency issued a news release saying that before filing the discrimination complaint, it sent black and white testers to seek to rent from Kress.

“While both testers were allowed to view the available apartment,” the release said, “Kress attempted to dissuade the African-American tester by making negative comments about the neighborhood, by stating that he would not do any repairs to the apartment and by explaining that he plans on selling the property.”

Kress refused to respond to that allegation in an interview Friday, saying he wanted to talk to his lawyer, whom he refused to identify.

Grace McKenzie, education coordinator for HOME, said the $5,500 settlement was reached Nov. 18, one day before the case was to have gone to trial before an administrative law judge.

Kress said his attorney told him he had a good case but there were no guarantees he would win.

“I faced over $30,000 in punitive damages because of this young lady’s lies,” he said. “My lawyer advised me to protect my assets.”

“I feel justice has been served,” said Peterman, who now lives with her daughter in Niagara Falls. “[Kress] knows he did something wrong.”