Opinion ID: 1472683
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: the fair housing act and the court's misallocation of blame

Text: Congress initially passed the Fair Housing Act of 1968 in the exercise of its authority to eliminate badges and incidents of slavery. Jones v. Mayer Co., 392 U.S. 409, 442-43, 88 S.Ct. 2186, 20 L.Ed.2d 1189 (1968). The legislation was enacted in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination in order to right a grievous wrong; racial discrimination in housing had herd[ed] men [and women] into ghettos and [had made] their ability to buy [or rent] property turn on the color of their skin. Id. Originally, the Act prohibited only discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin, but today it also provides protection from discrimination based on sex or handicap. Indeed, landlords are required to accommodate the special needs of handicapped tenants, so long as the accommodation is reasonable. But true to its noble origins, the Fair Housing Act has always been, and must remain, a Fair Housing Act. Specifically, it must be applied in a way that is fair not only to complaining tenants but to landlords and other tenants as well. [3] Further, governmental intrusion in any landlord's business must be limited to the minimum required to achieve equal opportunity. United States v. W. Peachtree Tenth Corp., 437 F.2d 221, 228-29 (5th Cir.1971) (model decree). In my opinion, the Act is wrenched from its moorings as an instrument of justice if the court accepts, as it apparently does, the premise on which this action is founded, namely, that a tenant's alleged mental illness requires the toleration, for an indefinite period, of conduct detrimental to the well-being of others. See generally Jennifer L. Dolak, Note, The FHAA's Reasonable Accommodation & Direct Threat Provisions as Applied to Disabled Individuals Who Become, Disruptive, Abusive, or Destructive to Their Housing Environment, 36 IND. L. REV. 759 (2003) (hereinafter  Reasonable Accommodation & Direct Threat ). Traditionally, in the landlord-tenant context, the Act has provided protection to applicants for tenancy and tenants who have done no harm to the landlord or to other tenants, and who have suffered invidious discrimination (or who, in some cases, have been denied a reasonable accommodation not detrimental to the well-being of other persons) on grounds prohibited by the Act. Here, we are being asked to uphold the perceived prerogatives of a tenant who has imperiled the health and safety of her fellow-tenants and undermined their quality of life. Where, as in this case, the party seeking an accommodation has already inflicted harm upon innocent third parties for a significant period of time, any accommodation that will inevitably further prolong the existence of this harm is, in my opinion, presumptively unreasonable as a matter of law. See Andover Hous. Auth., 820 N.E.2d at 825 (reject[ing] the idea that [where tenants have failed to conform their conduct to the lease], indefinite requests for more time to address a disabling condition are reasonable) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). The appellant, Evelyn Douglas, is an abuser of alcohol, and she is also alleged to be suffering from a mood disorder. Soon after moving in to her apartment, she turned it into a filthy, urine-filled, rodent-infested nightmare. The conditions in the apartment generated a stench which could readily be detected from the staircase leading down to the unit. This situation, a patent threat to health and safety, continued unabated for about a year, in obvious violation of the Housing Regulations and the lease. A District of Columbia government representative from Adult Protective Services (APS) was visiting Ms. Douglas on a regular basis, and he observed her circumstances first hand. APS, however, did nothing about the unsanitary conditions. The basic claim made on the tenant's behalf is that the condition of her apartment and the adjacent area resulted from a mental illness which is said to have prevented her from keeping the place clean. Ms. Douglas was offered psychiatric treatment, but as her counsel acknowledged, she refused it. It appears to be undisputed that Ms. Douglas denied the landlord access to her apartment. A Neighborhood Legal Services attorney represented her conscientiously and vigorously, at no charge. Nevertheless, Ms. Douglas refused to cooperate with her counsel; instead, she all but disappeared from the scene, thus eliminating any possibility of productive settlement negotiations. Significantly, the proposed accommodation that her attorney belatedly suggested to the court depended entirely on what the District of Columbia supposedly was going to do, but the District had provided nothing at all to the court in writing or even orally. Ms. Douglas' attorney acknowledged to the judge on the eve of trial that he could not speak for the District, and he was unable to make any representation as to when, how thoroughly, or how often the District's agents would clean the premises if, indeed, they proposed to clean them at all; unfortunately, they had not made any improvement in the condition of the unit or its surroundings during APS' year of contact with Ms. Douglas. On the day before the trial, counsel responded to the judge's question regarding how much time was needed to put the unit in order by stating that his client was mentally ill. The tenant herself was unavailable to testify or to agree to any negotiated resolution. Absent a judgment of possession in favor of the landlord, there was no prospect at all for an early end to the unfortunate and protracted status quo. Yet, as the majority apparently views the record, the sole party at fault was the landlord, whom the court unfairly accuses of refusal to negotiate. I cannot agree with this assessment. On the contrary, for the entire period with which we are dealing in this case, it was the landlord and Kriegsfeld's other tenants who suffered injury at the hands of Ms. Douglas, and not the other way around. The residents of the apartment house were compelled, as a result of Ms. Douglas' actions, to spend a year in the vicinity of unsanitary, unhealthy, and unlawful conditions which Ms. Douglas had created. The year-long impact upon the quality of the lives of those who had to endure these conditions cannot simply be ignored  the world did not begin on the trial date. The tenant has the burden of proving that a proposed accommodation is reasonable, Groner, 250 F.3d at 1044; see also Andover Hous. Auth., 820 N.E.2d at 822, and as a matter of law, a proposal which was not supported even by a minimally specific or credible proffer, and which would have indefinitely prolonged the undeserved plight of Ms. Douglas' landlord and fellow-tenants, could not be shown to be a reasonable one.