The Department of Justice and Housing and Urban Development have just issued a guidance document concerning sober homes and other types of group living arrangements. It should help provide some clarity to cities and towns still wrestling with issues related to group living after decades of litigation. At the same, however, the document reminds us of the sobering reality that the Department of Justice and Housing and Urban Development believe they are above the law in their roles as advocates for the disabled, and will not hesitate to use their essentially unlimited resources to litigate intellectually unsustainable positions. More
FHA Reasonable Accommodation
Good news for the Fair Housing Act: TWC puts a dent in dialing for dollars
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA FHA General, ADA FHA Litigation General, Apartments, FHA, FHA Reasonable Accommodation, Reasonable accommodation Tags: City Vision, dialing for dollars, Fair Housing Advocates, HUD complaint, Patrick Coleman, Texas Workforce Commission
I’ve written before about the dialing for dollars phenomenon in Fair Housing Act claims (click here) and about how cheap standing facilitates litigation aimed more at profit than progress (click here). There is good news on both fronts from the Texas Workforce Commission, which recently dismissed several FHA complaints because the organization that filed them, a private corporation called Fair Housing Advocates, could not demonstrate it had standing. Fair Housing Advocates is operated by Patrick Coleman, one of the two owners of City Vision, a similar organization devoted to making money by means of HUD complaints. Citi Vision appears to have abandoned the dialing for dollars business earlier this year, probably because TWC started dismissing its complaints for lack of standing. More
Doing it wrong with support animal requests – a lesson in reasonable accommodation from HUD
By Richard Hunt in Animals, FHA, FHA Reasonable Accommodation, FHA Training, Landlord-tenant Tags: FHA charge of discrimination, reasonable accommodation, Support animal
Just after posting yesterday’s blog on the perils of being ignorant in FHA matters I received a copy of a recent charge of discrimination showing how reasonable accommodation can be done wrong. You can read the complaint here. The facts as presented in the charge show that the landlord made three important mistakes when refusing a request for a reasonable accommodation. The first was the manager’s absolute refusal to consider modifying the apartment’s no pet policy in response to the first request for accommodation. Absolute refusal is never the right way to respond to an initial request for accommodation because it fails the requirement that the management engage in an interactive process with the tenant. More
Reasonable accommodation and the FHA – ignorance is not bliss
By Richard Hunt in FHA, FHA Policies, FHA Reasonable Accommodation, FHA Training
Ignorance of the law is never a good idea. In a May 2, 2016 decision from the First Circuit it became clear that ignorance can be expensive. Castillo Condo. Ass’n v. U.S. Dep’t of Hous. & Urban Dev., 2016 WL 1732499 (1st Cir. May 2, 2016). The case was, as the Court observed, fact intensive, but a couple of observations about ignorance of the law explain much of the outcome.
The original complaining party, Carlo Giménez Bianco (“Giménez”) suffered from depression and anxiety. He wanted to keep his dog despite the Castillo Condominium’s no pets policy. He asked, he was rebuffed, and he moved out. He then filed a fair housing complaint. HUD’s initial investigation resulted in a charge of discrimination, which was referred to an Administrative Law Judge. The ALJ concluded after an evidentiary hearing that Giménez was not disabled and therefore not entitled to an accommodation. This decision was appealed to the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, who reviewed the evidence and reversed, finding that Giménez was disabled. The case went back down to the ALJ to assess damages and penalties. The ALJ awarded only $2,000 in damages and a $3,000 penalty. The latter was based on his finding that the Condominiums were not motivated by malice, but were simply ignorant. This went back up to the Secretary, who again disagreed, raising the damage amount to $20,000 and imposing the maximum penalty, $16,000. The Secretary found that ignorance was an aggravating rather than a mitigating factor, and justified the maximum penalty. The Secretary’s decision was appealed to the First Circuit, which ruled in favor of the Secretary on every count. More