Opinion ID: 1472683
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: the district government's role

Text: The purported reasonable accommodation presented to the trial court by counsel for the tenant was based entirely on what the District of Columbia government, and specifically the Office of Adult Protective Services, would supposedly do to remedy the unsanitary conditions in and around Ms. Douglas' apartment. There is no claim that Ms. Douglas herself could clean the unit and keep it clean. In fact, her attorneys maintain the exact opposite: she is supposed to be too mentally ill to accomplish this. Everything thus depended on APS. [9] On June 17, 2002, the eve of trial, the tenant's attorney could not proffer anything in writing from the District as to what APS was prepared to do for Ms. Douglas. As counsel acknowledged to the judge, I can't speak for the District. Although Damon Byrd, the APS representative, had been in court to testify on that very day, Ms. Douglas' attorney could not even proffer any oral assurance from the District as to when any cleaning by APS would begin, or how often or how thoroughly the unit and the surrounding area would be cleaned. The majority says little about the subject, but the severity of the Housing Code violations in and near the apartment was such that the situation obviously could not be remedied (or the unit kept clean and the foul odor permanently removed) by a visit every couple of weeks. Can anyone reasonably suppose, on this record, that the District and its representatives were prepared to come and clean the apartment and remove the stench more often than that, especially where the tenant was known to be difficult and uncooperative? If the District had been willing to do so, is it conceivable that Ms. Douglas' attorney would not have elicited this information from Mr. Byrd, or secured an affidavit, or had a lawyer from the District with him in court to make representations regarding what APS would do and when it would do it? In my view, it is self-evident that the answer to each of these questions must be a resounding No! Aside from the obvious vagueness and lack of detail in the tenant's proposed accommodation, even on the day before the trial began, the history of this case made the prospect of effective action by APS minimal at best. Mr. Byrd of APS had been coming to see Ms. Douglas for over a year. His visits began long before November 30, 2001the day the landlord's action for possession was brought. [10] According to Byrd's own testimony, the conditions in Ms. Douglas' unit were appalling. Nevertheless, throughout this entire period, there is no evidence that APS picked up a single piece of trash, washed a single dish, or took even the slightest measure to alleviate the unsanitary and unhealthy conditions in which Ms. Douglas was existing. As I pointed out when the case was before the division, the accommodation ultimately proposed by the tenant was contingent on actions by the District, which had dealt with Ms. Douglas for many months but had done nothing to resolve the situation, and on the cooperation of the tenant, who refused to cooperate and was nowhere to be found. Douglas I, 849 A.2d at 973 (dissenting opinion). [11] The past is prologue, and one might expect the court, in its discussion of the proposal by the tenant's counsel, to take into realistic consideration what the District had accomplished to date, namely, nothing. In fairness to the en banc majority (in contrast to the division majority), the remand order will provide the landlord with the opportunity, if Ms. Douglas becomes available and if an evidentiary hearing on remand is actually held, to emphasize this uninspiring history to the court before a Fair Housing Act defense can be presented to a jury. [12] Nevertheless, on the whole, the court treats APS' record of inaction as beside the point, tries to blame the landlord, and attempts to excuse that record on the irrelevant ground that Kriegsfeld's action for possession was pending for a part of the period when APS was visiting Ms. Douglas.