A Bronx Tale of Denial, Then Harrassment

Many apartment residents need to have a change made to a policy or practice as an accommodation for a disability. Owners must consider all such "reasonable accommodation" requests, then grant them if there's evidence that the resident has a qualifying disability under the Fair Housing Act (FHA) and needs the accommodation for that disability, and if the request is reasonable.

A new Charge brought by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) against a New York City cooperative claims that not only did the cooperative wrongfully deny a resident's request to keep an emotional support animal (despite a no-pets policy), but the cooperative harassed the resident because of it.

According to the Charge, the cooperative refused to accept the resident’s rent payments, threatened to suspend his garage privileges, and attempted to evict him from his apartment. In addition, the cooperative's security director allegedly didn't stop his officers from harassing the resident and his wife for keeping the service animal, even after the tenant specifically asked him to do so.

A HUD administrative law judge is expected to hear the case.

Interesting to note:

• The cooperative, known as "Co-op City" and located in the Bronx, has 15,372 apartments in 35 high-rise buildings and seven townhouse clusters, housing roughly 50,000 low- and middle-income residents.
  
  
• The cooperative appears to have been familiar with the FHA's requirement, having given the resident its own "Application for Reasonable Accommodation of Dog Application Form" to complete.
  
  
• According to the Charge, the cooperative stopped contesting the dog's presence on account of New York City's three-month waiver rule. Read my About.com article for more information on this rule.
  
  

Fair Housing Month: April Is Also National Sexual Assault Awareness Month

On April 1, President Obama signed a proclamation making April National Sexual Assault Awareness Month, a time to "recommit ourselves not only to lifting the veil of secrecy and shame surrounding sexual violence, but also to raising awareness, expanding support for victims, and strengthening our response."

It's fitting that National Sexual Assault Awareness Month coincides with Fair Housing Month because sexual assault or harrassment is a form of sex discrimination, which the Fair Housing Act (FHA) bans.

For a recent example, just look at today's announcement by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) about a complaint it filed yesterday against a New York City apartment building super and landlord.

The super allegedly sexually harrassed many female tenants at three apartment buildings over a period of years. According to the complaint, the super engaged in sex-based discrimination through his:

• unwanted verbal sexual advances, such as repeatedly soliciting sexual favors in exchange for reduced rent;
  
• unwanted sexual touching, such as grabbing;
  
• unwanted sexual language, including yelling obscenities to female tenants who didn't comply with sexual demands;
  
• conditioning the terms of tenancy on the granting of sexual favors;
  
• attempting to enter tenants' apartments while inebriated, demanding sex;
  
• granting and denying tangible housing benefits (such as mail delivery and making repairs) based on sex; and
  
• taking adverse action (such as threatening eviction) against female tenants who refused or objected to his sexual advances.

The landlord was also named in the lawsuit for having allegedly been aware of the super's sexual harrassment and not having taken "any meaningful steps" to investigate his tenants' multiple complaints of sexual harrassment. The DOJ also identifies the super as a registered Level 3 (high-risk) sex offender in the complaint.

The super and the landlord must now defend themselves in court against the DOJ, which seeks monetary damages, civil penalties, punitive damages, and injunctive relief.

Return tomorrow for the twenty-third part of this special "Fair Housing Month" feature at Fairhousingblog.com.

HUD Asks Chicago, New York, and San Francisco for LGBT Testing Ideas

When an agency wants to send fair housing testers to a property, it's usually easy to pick suitable people to fill the role. For instance, to test for racial discrimination, agencies send white and minority testers and then compare their notes. If it's disability discrimination at issue, testers with and without a noticeable disability are dispatched to check for bias.

But what about finding appropriate people to test for discrimination based on sexual orientation? Because sexual orientation isn't one of the Fair Housing Act (FHA)'s protected classes, testing for this type of discrimination hasn't been performed by a federal agency, and no organization to date has attempted to test for sexual orientation discrimination in housing on a national scale.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) wants to change that, having recently announced plans to collect data on the state of sexual orientation discrimination across the United States. According to a report from BusinessWeek, HUD will first seek input from people living in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco — three cities that currently ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity — to help determine who would make good testers, what they should say, and how they should act to get landlords to express their bias, if any exists.

What's your advice to HUD? How can testers for sexual orientation discrimination be most effective? Also, do you think such a housing study is long overdue, or is it an unnecessary expenditure of taxpayer money?

What do you think?

Landlord May Take a Bath for Refusing to Allow Modification of One

After refusing to let a tenant modify her bathroom to make it more accessible, a Brooklyn, New York landlord has finally come clean. But the delay was costly, as the landlord now faces $80,000 in damages for the alleged harm he caused by taking nearly two years to grant the tenant's reasonable modification request under the Fair Housing Act.

The tenant, who suffered from emphysema, heart disease, sciatica, and rheumatoid arthritis, had requested a walk-in shower to replace the bathtub. She explained in numerous letters to the landlord that she needed the modification for her disability. As The New York Post reported, United Cerebral Palsy agreed to install the more accessible shower for free, and so the replacement would cost the landlord nothing.

As the landlord continued to ignore the tenant's requests, she reportedly often had to travel from her third-floor walk-up several blocks to bathe at her daughter's house. When finally reached for comment, the landlord pointed out that the tenant doesn't pay much for her rent-controlled apartment, and suggested she move to a nursing home.

An administrative law judge didn't buy it. On September 25, the judge ordered the landlord to pay a $50,000 penalty plus $30,000 to the tenant for her mental suffering, and to install the requested shower at the landlord's own expense.

When the tenant returned home from a hospital visit recently, she found the shower she had requested. Although this incident may one day become water under the bridge, this landlord isn't likely to forget that federal law requires landlords to consider requests that disabled tenants make for modifications to their apartments, and then grant them if they're reasonable.

What Would the Neighbors Think?

Here's a case that shows you needn't prove a person is a racist in order to successfully claim that he violated the Fair Housing Act's (FHA) ban on racial discrimination.

A New York City landlord allegedly refused to rent to people who weren't white because, he claimed, the neighborhood was white and that's the way everyone wanted it.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently charged this landlord (and his brother, the co-owner) with discrimination based on race, color, and national origin, on behalf of two fair housing agencies, the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) and Long Island Housing Services Inc. (LIHS). According to the Charge, when each of these agencies sent minority testers to inquire about vacancies, the landlord repeatedly asked about their racial and ethnic background and made discriminatory statements. For example, the landlord offered what he thought was good justification for his anti-white bias, explaining that renting to a black person would lead to neighbors' complaints.

A HUD administrative law judge will hear the case.

Is the landlord's justification — that he's bound by the neighborhood's supposed desires and prejudices — valid? Or, do you think the landlord's is clearly illegal, given that his statements restrict housing choices, and that his reasoning runs counter to the policy behind the FHA itself?

What do you think?

Obama Taps Donovan to Lead HUD

Shaun Donovan, New York City's housing commissioner, will be the next secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), president-elect Barack Obama announced during his weekly radio address this morning. Mr. Obama noted that:

With experience that stretches from the public sector to the private sector to academia, Shaun will bring to this important post fresh thinking, unencumbered by old ideology and outdated ideas. He understands that we need to move past the stale arguments that say low-income Americans shouldn't even try to own a home or that our mortgage crisis is due solely to a few greedy lenders.

HUD is the federal agency charged with primary responsibility for enforcing the Fair Housing Act.

Coop in the Doghouse for 'Unreasonable' Support Animal Rules

HUD issued a discrimination charge, dated September 29, 2008, against a New York City coop for not allowing a family to keep a dog to help their autistic child. After the 11-year-old boy's doctor told his parents she's prescribing an emotional support animal, the parents requested an exception to the coop's no-pet policy as a reasonable accommodation for their son's disability.

The coop agreed to let the parents get a support dog for their son, but with conditions that the parents alleged were unreasonable, including:

• Requiring the parents to purchase a $1 million liability insurance policy
• Imposing a weight limit of under ten pounds
• Banning the use of the passenger elevator when transporting the dog
• Imposing a two-hour limit on how long the dog may be left alone in the coop
• Requiring that the dog be muzzled while in the common areas

HUD agreed with the parents, charging the coop with violating the Fair Housing Act's ban on disability discrimination. A HUD administrative law judge will hear the matter, unless the coop or the parents choose to bring the case to a federal district court.

The Fair Housing Act? Fugheddaboutit!

Since January 2008, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has notified several of the New York City's top landlords and their architects that some of their buildings aren't accessible to people with disabilities, in violation of the Fair Housing Act's (FHA) design and construction requirements, according to reporting on August 18, 2008 by The New York Times. The FHA's requirements generally apply to multifamily buildings that were designed and constructed "for first occupancy" after March 13, 1991. (See Section 3604(f)(3)(C) of the FHA and its relevant regulations, 24 CFR 100.205.) They require, for example, usable doors (by a person in a wheelchair), bathroom walls that are reinforced for the possible later installation of grab bars, and an accessible route into and through each apartment.

The landlords argue that they have been complying with the FHA through their successful compliance with Local Law 58, a city accessibilty law that took effect in 1988. They fear that lawsuits could require them to undergo a costly retrofitting of their buildings, which could involve some 100,000 apartments and a pricetag in the tens of millions of dollars.

The DOJ, however, claims that compliance with the FHA isn't the same as compliance with Local Law 58, which isn't listed as a safe harbor for FHA compliance.

What do you think?