Court Opinion

ID: 9636243
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:21:02.207783+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:43.203372
License: Public Domain

SCHWELB, Associate Judge,
with whom WASHINGTON, Chief Judge, and GLICKMAN, Associate Judge, join, dissenting:
I.
INTRODUCTION
I wrote about this controversy in some detail in my dissenting opinion when the *1145case was before the division, see Douglas v. Kriegsfeld Corp., 849 A.2d 951, 971-99 (D.C.2004)(Douglas I), and for the most part, I continue to adhere to the views there expressed.1 The case is in a somewhat different posture now, for a remand, as ordered by the en banc court is, in my view, more reasonable than the ruling of the division that Ms. Douglas’ counsel should have been permitted, without further inquiry, to present a Fair Housing Act defense.2 For the reasons set forth herein, and for those described in my dissent in Douglas I, however, I continue to believe that the trial court’s decision should be affirmed. Specifically, in light of
1. the severity and duration of Ms. Douglas’ violations of her lease and of the Housing Regulations, and the consequent threat to the health and safety of others;
2. the failure of the District of Columbia government to do anything about the conditions for at least a year;
3. the absence of any assurance from the District regarding what, if any, remedial measures it proposed to take, and when and how often it would take them; and
4.Ms. Douglas’ lack of cooperation and disappearance from the scene,
I would hold that the “accommodation” proposed by Ms. Douglas’ counsel was unreasonable as a matter of law.
II.
THE FAIR HOUSING ACT AND THE COURT’S MISALLOCATION OF BLAME
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 discrimina*1146tion 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 (“rejecting] 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.
*1147The 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 ease, 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.
III.
THE TENANT’S VIOLATIONS
The circumstances giving rise to this case are poignant; a woman with an alcohol addiction and related problems was living in deplorable conditions; the District of Columbia government was aware of her circumstances for more than a year and did nothing at all about them. But Ms. Douglas’ plight is not the whole story; an important subject to which the majority has paid quite limited attention is rather a basic one: What did Ms. Douglas do to cause the landlord to seek to evict her? The answer is central to this case, for it defines the conditions that a reasonable *1148accommodation must address. The melancholy truth, as we have seen, is that Ms. Douglas not only turned her apartment into an unsanitary and uninhabitable unit, but by her neglect, she also generated a disagreeable odor that polluted the surrounding area. There was also rodent infestation. By the time the case went to trial in June 2002, this situation had continued unabated at least since July 2001, and perhaps from the beginning of Ms. Douglas’ tenancy in January 2001. Although the court does not mention it, it is indisputable and, as far as I know, undisputed that Ms. Douglas was in protracted and severe violation of several of the District’s Housing Regulations requiring tenants to maintain their units in sanitary condition. Douglas I, 849 A.2d at 976-77 n. 12.4 The purpose of these regulations is to protect the public health. See 14 DCMR § 800.09 (“Premises maintained in violation of this chapter create a danger to the health, welfare or safety of the occupants and public, and constitute a public nuisance.”). Perhaps de minimis violations of the Housing Regulations do not constitute a danger to health and safety, but Ms. Douglas’ violations were hardly de minimis.
It would be unfair to say that the majority has ignored this subject altogether. The court’s lengthy opinion contains almost three lines about it on page 3. Not content with that, the majority twice refers to Ms. Douglas’ unit as a “filthy apartment,” and there may even be one or two other oblique references. Obviously, though, the majority does not regard the trashing and fouling of the premises or the severe and protracted violation of the Housing Regulations as having much bearing on the proper analysis of this case. In particular, the court apparently thinks it unnecessary even to mention the possibility that conditions of this level of severity, and of such extended duration, just might require immediate attention, and that the need for prompt amelioration should be a significant part of the court’s calculus in determining whether the “accommodation” proposed by counsel on behalf of the absent tenant was “reasonable.” My view, on the other hand, is that where a tenant has created conditions as extreme as those in and around Ms. Douglas’ unit, and where these conditions have continued unabated throughout her tenancy (and after the APS representative began to visit her) to the detriment of the health and safety of Ms. Douglas’ neighbors, this reality is central to the determination whether there is any appreciable prospect that a proposed accommodation is adequate or will work.
The majority’s marginalization of Ms. Douglas’ role in creating the problem is also important for another reason. So far as I can tell, the majority opinion does not contain a single word of criticism of Ms. Douglas, or any suggestion that anybody but the landlord was to blame for anything. The representatives of the District of Columbia government, who observed the conditions in and near Ms. Douglas’ unit for a year without initiating any remedial measures, likewise emerge blameless from the court’s accounting.5 From the majority’s perspective, the landlord (Kri-egsfeld) appears to be the sole villain of *1149the piece,6 and counsel for Ms. Douglas, demonstrating the quality that makes “chutzpah” such an expressive noun, actually requested in Ms. Douglas’ counterclaim that the landlord be held liable to her for damages!
Yet it was Ms. Douglas who caused the unsanitary conditions and the sickening smell on the landlord’s property, not vice versa, and her unfortunate alcohol addiction and mood disorder did not lessen the threat to health and safety. Assuming, as I do for purposes of this opinion, that Ms. Douglas was suffering from a handicap within the meaning of the Fair Housing Act, the law surely has not reached the point where alcoholics and people suffering from mood disorders or other comparable afflictions are not only protected by the Act, but also relieved of any responsibility whatever for their actions. If perverse incentives are to be avoided, there must be some limit to the “lenient treatment [that may be] secured for [Ms. Douglas] by her own insobriety.” In re Soininen, 853 A.2d 712, 729 (D.C.2004). Ms. Douglas, whose problems could well lead to homelessness, is certainly a person deserving our sympathy, but if she was a victim here at all— and this is a big “if’ — she was not only a victim, nor was she the only victim; Kri-egsfeld and Ms. Douglas’ fellow-tenants were victims too. In failing to recognize that this is so, the majority paints a picture that, from my perspective, is disconcertingly askew.
IY.
HEALTH AND SAFETY
The Fair Housing Act provides an exception to the landlord’s duty to offer a reasonable accommodation where the tenancy constitutes “a direct threat to the health and safety of other individuals.” 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(9). The legislative history makes it clear that this exception may not be based on stereotypes:
Any claim that an individual’s tenancy poses a direct threat and a substantial risk of harm must be established on the basis of a history of overt acts or current conduct. Generalized assumptions, subjective fears, and speculation are insufficient to prove the requisite direct threat to others. In the case of a person with a mental illness, for example, there must be objective evidence from the person’s prior behavior that the person has committed overt acts which caused harm or which directly threatened harm.
H.R. REP. No. 100-711, at 29 (1988), reprinted in 1988 U.S.C.A. A. No. 2173, 2190. In the case of Ms. Douglas, however, there is “ample objective evidence from [her] prior behavior” that she has committed “overt acts which caused harm or which directly threatened harm.” I think it incontestable that the violations of the Housing Regulations caused by Ms. Douglas— the filth, the smell, the rodent infestation — constituted a direct threat to health and safety. The majority does not necessarily disagree, but holds that this exception to the landlord’s obligations under the Act applies only where the threat persists after an attempt has been made to reach a reasonable accommodation.
In my opinion, it is simplistic and illogical to adopt an inflexible rule providing that an attempt to negotiate a reasonable *1150accommodation is always required before the direct “threat to health and safety” provision can come into play. On the contrary,
[this] determination must surely depend on several factors, including the severity and duration of the danger and the anticipated amount of time required to explore and implement the requested accommodation. Obviously, if the danger to person and property is imminent, indefinite delay cannot be tolerated. In the present case, the smell, the threat of rodents and vermin, the fire hazard, and the other severe problems in [and near] Ms. Douglas’ apartment were sufficient, in my view, to warrant the court’s refusal to countenance their continuation for another minute, and especially for a period of time that even counsel for Ms. Douglas was not prepared to estimate. I am therefore satisfied that there was no error in the trial judge’s analysis of this provision of the statute.
Douglas I, 849 A.2d at 996 (dissenting opinion). As the Supreme Court of South Dakota put it in a nutshell, “to require an automatic attempt to accommodate a dangerous tenant would needlessly place other residents in the tenant’s building at risk.” Arnold, Murray Constr., L.L.C. v. Hicks, 621 N.W.2d 171, 175 (S.D.2001).7 In the present case, such a risk had already been in place for a long time when the trial judge was called upon to make his decision.
The existence of the “health and safety” provision vindicates the underlying assumption of fairness to all upon which the Fair Housing Act and other civil rights statutes are based. This is so because the provision was designed to protect persons in the kind of situation in which Ms. Douglas’ landlord and her fellow-residents found themselves. In holding that after a year of filth, rodents, and stench, § 3604(f)(9) still does not protect Ms. Douglas’ neighbors from further extension of the unhealthy and potentially perilous status quo, the court, in my view, gives the health and safety provision a far too crabbed construction. In this case, as in Andover Hous. Auth., 820 N.E.2d at 825, “[t]here was simply a lack of evidence that if the tenant[’]s eviction was delayed, [she] could conform [her] conduct to the terms of [her] lease.”8
V.
THE DISTRICT GOVERNMENT’S ROLE
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
*1151On 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 80, 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), *1152the 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 Kri-egsfeld’s action for possession was pending for a part of the period when APS was visiting Ms. Douglas.
VI.
MS. DOUGLAS’ NON-PARTICIPATION
Another feature of this controversy to which the majority ascribes remarkably little significance is that Ms. Douglas, the purported victim of unlawful discrimination in housing, wanted nothing at all to do with the case. The majority’s principal discussion of this unusual fact is contained in footnote 4. There, the majority refers to “[t]he tenant’s unavailability for settlement discussions immediately before trial ” (emphasis added), and states that her unavailability “is not legally determinative of anything .In my opinion, the majority is mistaken about the facts, wrong about their legal significance, and unrealistic and impractical regarding the entire issue.
To begin with, Ms. Douglas was not merely unavailable, as the court suggests, “immediately before trial.” On the contrary, by June 17, 2002, as the division majority acknowledged in Douglas I, 849 A.2d at 954 n. 1 (and, indeed, as the en banc majority concedes here, ante note 3), she had been effectively “missing” for quite a long time. Ms. Douglas did not attend the pretrial conference on April 17, 2002 (two months before trial), and, so far as I am aware, it is undisputed that she had been unavailable to her counsel for several weeks before that. Thus, although her attorney represented to the District’s Department of Regulatory Affairs, in a letter dated February 5, 2002, that Ms. Douglas had been referred to outpatient treatment “and is prepared to continue any treatment that will improve her mental condition,” id. at 997, counsel conceded in his brief to the division that she was “refusing any and all treatment by a psychiatrist,” id. at 989; the assurance to the District was thus in error. Beginning several weeks before April 17, 2002 (either before or shortly after her attorney’s February 20 letter to counsel for Kriegsfeld), Ms. Douglas was conspicuously absent from the fray — a non-participant in her own case.13
Contrary to the majority’s ever-so-understanding and, as I see it, condescending view that a litigant’s insistence on having nothing to do with a lawsuit regarding her own tenancy is inconsequential, common sense tells us that Ms. Douglas’ absence made a great deal of difference. For example, the majority claims that the landlord violated the Fair Housing Act by not “opening a dialogue” in response to the February 20 letter from the tenant’s attorney to Kriegsfeld’s attorney. To catalogue all that is wrong with that assertion is not easy. I attempted to do so in some detail in my dissent in Douglas 1, 849 A.2d at *1153990-92, and I invite any interested reader to peruse the entirety of what I had to say.14
Both of the federal appellate courts that have addressed the subject have held that the landlord has no obligation under the Fair Housing Act to engage in an “interactive process” with the party claiming to be handicapped. See, e.g., Groner, 250 F.3d at 1047; Lapid-Laurel, L.L.C. v. Zoning Bd. of Adjustment of the Township of Scotch Plains, 284 F.3d 442, 446 (3d Cir.2002); see also Andover Hous. Auth., 820 N.E.2d at 822 (no statutory obligation, but interactive process is the “optimal way”); Reasonable Accommodation & Direct Threat, 36 IND. L. REV at 772. As the court explained in Groner,
while some courts have imposed an obligation on employers and employees to engage in an interactive process, there is no such language in the Fair Housing Act or in the relevant sections of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s implementing regulations that would impose such a duty on landlords and tenants. See 24 C.F.R. §§ 100.200-.205.
250 F.3d at 1046 (emphasis added). The underlying premise on which the majority bases its opinion is thus seriously flawed; the majority imports into the statute and regulations something that is not there, and castigates the landlord for failure to comply with a non-existent requirement.15
*1154Assuming, contrary to the federal appellate decisions, that an obligation to engage in a dialogue exists, the landlord in this case was entitled to take the position that Ms. Douglas was not suffering from a relevant “handicap” within the meaning of the Fair Housing Act. This was not a situation involving, say, a blind or paralyzed tenant, whose affliction no rational person could question. Whether Ms. Douglas’ condition placed her within the protection of the Act was a judgment call; indeed, the trial judge later found that Ms. Douglas had not been shown to be suffering the kind of mental impairment which would prevent her from maintaining a sanitary apartment. Even though this court has subsequently disagreed with the trial judge, this did not render the landlord’s position unreasonable. There is surely no obligation to engage in a continuing dialogue with a tenant who is not handicapped within the meaning of the Act. But even if there were such a duty, any attempt by Kriegsfeld’s attorney to initiate a dialogue would have served no useful purpose. As the majority acknowledges in its footnoted reference to Ms. Douglas’ absence, her attorney told the court that he was “willing to entertain any settlement offer,” such as the one that had been presented to him in advance of trial by counsel for Kriegsfeld, but that he “need[ed] to speak with her,” ie., with his absent client, before responding to a proposal by the landlord. It was not the landlord who refused to negotiate, but the tenant, whose unavailability for several months made settlement on any terms unattainable.
Further, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, for Ms. Douglas’ attorney to proceed to trial without having his client available. The landlord claimed, without any contradiction in the record, that Ms. Douglas had refused the landlord access to her unit. Without Ms. Douglas’ testimony that she would permit entry by Kriegsfeld and by APS, there would be no basis for a finding that any plan to clean the apartment and to keep it clean could succeed. Moreover, although Ms. Douglas’ attorney had made proffers regarding what he deemed to be a “reasonable accommodation,” Ms. Douglas was not available — and she therefore could not testify, let alone prove — that she would cooperate with any plan that her counsel had proposed or might propose. According to the majority, she considered the case a “trick” to have her committed, and she wanted nothing to do with it. Without her cooperation, the purported reasonable accommodation was a mirage.
VII.
THE UNREASONABLENESS OF THE PROPOSED ACCOMMODATION
Although it has prudently eschewed the division’s notion that the trial judge’s exercise of discretion regarding the qualifications of Sutton and Byrd was “manifestly erroneous,” the en banc majority, viewing the record in the light most favorable to Ms. Douglas, holds that there was sufficient evidence to permit an impartial jury to find that Ms. Douglas was suffering from a mental handicap within the meaning of the Act. I acknowledge that, given the applicable “light most favorable” standard, this may fairly be termed a somewhat close call, and as I have previously noted, I am prepared to assume, in this opinion, that counsel for Ms. Douglas presented enough evidence to raise a jury question. Nevertheless, some additional comment is in order, for the nature of Ms. Douglas’ condition affects both the harm done to the landlord and to the other *1155tenants and the reasonableness vel non of the proposed accommodation.
Although the point has not been addressed by the parties or in either opinion in the division, there is considerable question whether, on this record, Ms. Douglas is a “qualified handicapped person” who is entitled to protection under the Act. To paraphrase a passage from the decision of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in Andover Hous. Auth.,
[t]he term “qualified” handicapped person is not used in ... the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(2).... However, it is used in § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 794, to which [the Fair Housing Act] [is] analogous.... We see little reason not to consider whether a plaintiff is a “qualified” handicapped person in the context of a housing discrimination claim “because many of the issues that arise in the ‘qualified’ analysis also arise in the context of the ‘reasonable modifications’ or ‘undue burden’ analysis. That is, if more than reasonable modifications are required of an institution in order to accommodate an individual, then that individual is not qualified for the program.” Bercovitch v. Baldwin Sch., Inc., 133 F.3d 141, 154 (1st Cir.1998). In the public housing context, a “qualified” handicapped individual is one who could meet the authority’s eligibility requirements for occupancy and who could meet the conditions of a tenancy, with a reasonable accommodation or modification in the authority’s rules, policies, practices, or services .... Cf. Whittier Terrace Assoc. v. Hampshire, 26 Mass.App.Ct. 1020, 1020-1021, 532 N.E.2d 712 (1989). Here, the tenant [] made no showing that, even if eviction proceedings were withdrawn or delayed, [she ] could comply with the terms of [her ] lease by not [harming her ] neighbors. The evidence plainly suggested otherwise.
820 N.E.2d at 823-24 (emphasis added; citations to state law omitted). In my opinion, the foregoing analysis, and especially the last two italicized sentences, can be readily applied to the present case.16 The conditions in and near Ms. Douglas’ unit have already created an “undue burden” on her landlord and fellow-tenants, and she has proffered no realistic prospect that the danger to health and safety would disappear if her eviction were briefly delayed.
Aside from the reasoning of Andover Hous. Auth., I think it important to emphasize another issue with which the majority, in my view, does not come to grips. The practical consequence of finding Ms. Douglas to be mentally handicapped for purposes of the Act is to excuse her, at least for some time (and in this case, she has already been excused for a very long time) from the basic obligation of any tenant, under the lease and under the law, to maintain her apartment in a decent and sanitary condition and to avoid any threat to the health and safety of others.17 Be*1156cause of this, “reasonable accommodation” comes to mean at least temporary preferential treatment and, necessarily, the tolerance, in Ms. Douglas’ case, of unsanitary conditions that would warrant the immediate eviction of another tenant.18
Mental impairment is a handicap under the Act, but not all handicaps have the same consequences. If a deaf tenant is permitted to have a hearing dog notwithstanding a “no pets” clause in the lease, see Bronk v. Ineichen, 54 F.3d at 428-29, this does not seriously affect the living conditions of his or her fellow-tenants. Similarly, if a tenant who suffers from multiple sclerosis is provided with a parking place close to the entrance to the building, Shapiro v. Cadman Towers, Inc., 51 F.3d 328, 336 (2d Cir.1995), any inconvenience to tenants who are able to walk is trivial. Mentally handicapped tenants may also be entitled to accommodations comparable to those in Bronk and Shapiro. One court has held, for example, that a mentally ill patient might be permitted to retain his cat, in contravention of the landlord’s “no pet” policy, where, according to a psychiatrist’s affidavit, the tenant needed the pet in order to deal with his depression and anxiety. Crossroads Apts. Assocs. v. Le Boo, 152 Misc.2d 830, 578 N.Y.S.2d 1004, 1005-07 (City Ct. Rochester, N.Y. 1991).19 In that case, too, however, any possible consequences for other tenants were minimal.
Ms. Douglas’ request for what she calls a reasonable accommodation, on the other hand, is dramatically different. Her counsel’s proposal would require the landlord and the other tenants to countenance the continuation of unsanitary, unhealthy, and unlawful conditions that, in this case, have existed for a very long time. In my opinion, the legislators who voted for the Act as amended would be startled to learn that the statute that they had enacted — the Fair Housing Amendments Act — was being relied upon to prolong, even briefly, *1157the “right” of any tenant, whether black or white,20 female or male, alcoholic or sober, mentally ill or mentally healthy, to remain on the premises notwithstanding the kinds of prolonged and extensive violations of the lease and of the Housing Regulations disclosed by this record.
All of this goes to whether the requested accommodation was reasonable, and points unerringly to a negative answer to that question. Taking into consideration Ms. Douglas’ overall behavior and refusal to cooperate, there is simply no evidence in the record, nor any realistic proffer, that intervention by the District government could promptly remedy the conditions in and near Ms. Douglas’ unit. Even if giving a tenant with Ms. Douglas’ alleged affliction additional time to come into compliance with the lease and the housing regulations could be viewed as a “reasonable accommodation” in the abstract, it cannot fairly be so viewed in this case, given the extent and duration of the violations, the length of time that Ms. Douglas had already been given, and her counsel’s failure to provide any specifics in his proposed accommodation, even on the trial date.21
VIII.
THE CIRCUMSTANCES AT THE TIME OF TRIAL
I turn now to the situation confronting the judge on the eve of trial, when he was called upon to rule on the question whether Ms. Douglas’ attorney should be permitted, on the record as it then stood, to present a Fair Housing Act defense. The critical facts at that time were as follows:
*11581. From the date of the notice to quit or cure to the trial date, neither the tenant nor the District had done anything at all to remedy the violations of the lease and the law that prompted the landlord to send the notice.
2. The conditions in and around Ms. Douglas’ unit were extreme, and they had been so for over a year, with the stench and the assorted housing code violations inevitably threatening the health and safety not only of Ms. Douglas but of the landlord and of the other tenants as well. As a matter of common sense, very frequent and very thorough cleaning and disinfecting by APS would be required immediately in order to remedy the situation.
3. On June 17, 2002, the eve of trial, Ms. Douglas’ attorney was unable to tell the court how long a delay he was requesting on his client’s behalf:
THE COURT: How much time did she ask for?
COUNSEL FOR: As I stated, she’s mentally ill. MS. DOUGLAS
4. Ms. Douglas’ attorney acknowledged that he could not speak for the District.
5. Although the District’s representatives, including Mr. Byrd of APS, had appeared before the court, no proffer or representation had been made by the District or by any of its agents or employees (and the court had no way of guessing) whether, when, how often, or how thoroughly APS was prepared to clean the unit and restore safe and healthy conditions.
6. Ms. Douglas had not participated in the lawsuit or cooperated with her attorney, and she was nowhere to be found.
7. In asking for a “reasonable accommodation,” Ms. Douglas’ attorney had no information regarding whether such an accommodation would be acceptable to her, and he could make no representation in this regard.
8.Finally, there was no evidence that representatives of the District would be admitted to Ms. Douglas’ unit to clean and to make repairs.
Perhaps it is (theoretically) minimally possible that, notwithstanding all of these obstacles, Ms. Douglas could nevertheless have presented a case, sufficient for consideration by the jury, that she or the District could promptly cure her extreme and protracted violations of the lease and the law and eliminate the threat to health and safety. At some rarefied level of abstraction, her counsel might conceivably have been able to show that, if one considered only the future and not the past, the accommodation that her attorney had requested — apparently, that she be allowed to stay in her unit for some period while APS cleaned it and kept it clean — was a reasonable one. In theory, APS might suddenly, frequently, efficiently, and with lightning speed, do that which it had failed to do at all for a year. It is said that anything is possible, and I suppose that, hypothetically, Ms. Douglas might now abandon her policy of non-cooperation and welcome the cleaning crew with open arms. Perhaps the corridor outside her apartment would soon smell like a rose. But I perceive no realistic chance — indeed, no chance at all — that all of these improbable and implausible possibilities would come to pass. I quote the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts:
Nearly seven months22 passed from the time that the tenants were served with the notice to quit and the trial was held in the summary process action. That was more than ample time for the ten*1159ants to put in place an effective treatment plan for addressing Barskaya’s health problems while eliminating, or significantly reducing the excessive noise emanating from her apartment.23 The fact that Taylor was still complaining about the noise on a daily basis in May 2003, suggests that the tenants were unable to abate the problem.24
Andover Hous. Auth., 820 N.E.2d at 825.
The court suggests that a remand is appropriate because it would not take long to determine whether, with the aid of APS, Ms. Douglas could or would clean her unit, eliminate the odor, and maintain safe and sanitary conditions from that moment on. In my opinion, however, the majority’s notion that all would be resolved in a couple of weeks is illusory. I reiterate what I wrote when the case was before the division:
Even if — and on this record it is a gargantuan and almost droll “if’ — representatives of the District were suddenly to “[straighten] up and fly right”25 and to clean the apartment within a week or two of an order of the trial court, there would be no assurance (or reason to believe) that the unit would remain clean. If it did not, there would of course be more allegations and denials, more litigation, more delay, and more arguable violations of the lease and of the law, and it is naive indeed to suppose that the case would quickly be over. Moreover, given the state of the apartment over a long period of time, as well as the tenant’s lack of interest in and absence from the pretrial proceedings and from the trial, no impartial jury could reasonably find the proposal made by counsel ,for the tenant to be a “reasonable accommodation” (and, in my opinion, no reasonable jury would have so found).
Douglas I, 849 A.2d at 973 (dissenting opinion). Accordingly, I would affirm the judgment.26
*1160GLICKMAN, Associate Judge,
with whom WASHINGTON, Chief Judge, and WAGNER, Associate Judge, join, and with whom SCHWELB, Associate Judge, joins with respect to all but the first paragraph, dissenting:
I agree with certain important conclusions that the majority reaches. In particular, I agree that Ms. Douglas proffered enough evidence to permit a trier of fact to find by a preponderance of the evidence that mental illness and alcoholism rendered her unable to keep her apartment clean and sanitary as required by her lease.1 In principle, I also agree with the majority’s conclusion that the Fair Housing Act permits a handicapped tenant to request a reasonable accommodation to enable her to maintain her tenancy at any time before a judgment of possession has been entered. As a corollary, I agree as well that a landlord who ignores even a last-minute request by a tenant to accommodate a disability does so at its peril, though I think it overstates matters to suggest that a landlord’s failure to “open a dialogue” with the tenant and engage in an “interactive process” is in itself a violation of the Fair Housing Act. The violation lies in the landlord’s unjustified refusal to grant a handicapped tenant’s request for a reasonable accommodation that is necessary to afford the tenant equal opportunity to use or enjoy the leased dwelling. 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(3)(B). Finally, I also agree with the majority that, in determining whether a landlord is justified in rejecting a requested accommodation because the tenant poses an unacceptable threat to the health or safety of others, a court must consider the extent to which the proposed accommodation would alleviate the threat.
Nonetheless, I think the majority goes astray in concluding that a jury could find that Ms. Douglas requested a reasonable accommodation in this case. Her only request was for a last-minute, indefinite stay of the eviction proceedings to allow her counsel to continue to try to enlist the District of Columbia government to develop, fund and carry out a suitable plan of some kind to keep her apartment clean. The only concrete proffer her counsel could make in support of this request was that a government fund did exist for pay*1161ing contractors to clean apartments for handicapped persons in need of such services, and that Ms. Douglas, though she had disappeared, was eligible for such assistance. Although counsel had been in contact with the government officials for months, the District still had not agreed to clean the apartment and no cleaning plan had been proposed or even developed.2 Judge Schwelb’s dissent amply demonstrates the unreasonableness of Ms. Douglas’s stay request in light of the inadequacy of her counsel’s proffer, the serious health hazards created by Ms. Douglas’s tenancy, her disappearance and her resistance to remedial measures, and the District government’s demonstrated lack of interest and prolonged failure to address the situation. I write separately because I think it important to highlight another, more basic respect in which Ms. Douglas’s request was deficient. As the trial court recognized, Ms. Douglas’s proposal was simply too vague to rise to the level of a bona fide request for a reasonable accommodation under the Fair Housing Act.
Judge Ferren’s opinion for the court insists “there was no disqualifying vagueness here.” Ante at 1121. Given the number of judges who have joined either this dissent or Judge Farrell’s concurrence, that is not a statement to which a majority of this court subscribes. As Judge Ferren is compelled to concede, Ms. Douglas “never proffered the kinds of details that ordinarily would be required to convince a fact-finder that [her] proposal was reasonable, that is, likely to keep the apartment clean.” Ante at 1136. “For example,” the majority opinion acknowledges, “tenant’s counsel did not specify the number of days required for the stay, or the basis for assuring tenant cooperation, or the frequency and duration of cleaning by the District government.” Id. The February 20 letter from Ms. Douglas’s counsel, on which the majority opinion places so much reliance, did not even state “what kind of accommodation the tenant was seeking or how ... the District government would help,” and it did not even mention a stay of the eviction proceedings. Id. at 1124.
Despite its evident appreciation that Ms. Douglas in fact never made a specific enough request for accommodation, Judge Ferren’s opinion offers two reasons for refusing to affirm the trial court. The first reason is that the February 20 letter “supplied enough detail”3 to obligate the landlord to “open a dialogue with the tenant” and “press[] for particulars.” Ante at 1137. “By declining to do so,” the majority asserts, “the landlord failed to demonstrate any missing element or other inherent defect in the tenant’s proposal [and] thereby kept the level of specificity *1162required to establish prima facie ‘reasonableness’ at the minimum.” Id. at 1137. The second reason advanced by the majority is that it is, supposedly, “clear from the record that any more detail proffered by the tenant to the trial court would have been fruitless,” because the court’s rulings against Ms. Douglas on other grounds “would likely have forestalled further inquiry into whether any kind of stay, coupled with a cleaning effort, would have been reasonable.” Ante at 1138.
These reasons do not stand up to scrutiny. The first reason, the landlord’s supposed non-responsiveness to Ms. Douglas’s request, is flawed both factually and legally. To begin with, as a factual matter, it is unfair for the majority to castigate the landlord for not opening a dialogue with Ms. Douglas and her counsel to fill in the details of her February 20 request for an unspecified accommodation. Although the landlord did not respond to that vague request immediately, the record does not support the assertions in the majority opinion that the landlord’s counsel “essentially stonewalled” and “refused any dialogue with the tenant’s counsel” until it was too late for “a good faith exchange.” Ante at 1142, 1143. Two weeks prior to trial, when a productive dialogue was still possible, the landlord’s counsel solicited “the details” of a suitable accommodation from Ms. Douglas’s counsel, and her counsel could not provide them. The landlord cannot be faulted for having concluded then, just as a majority of this court has concluded now, that the tenant’s proposal “simply lacked any specifics” and could not be evaluated. Id. at 1117. Thereafter, as trial drew nearer and Ms. Douglas’s counsel furnished no additional information in response to the landlord’s inquiry, it was understandable that the landlord did not “see there’s any way to get around or to accommodate Ms. Douglas in this matter to allow her to stay.”4 Id. at 1117. No reasonable jury, I respectfully suggest, could find on these facts that the landlord was “not open to any accommodation even if reasonable.” Id. at 1117 n. 4. In point of fact, moreover, Ms. Douglas herself disappeared “several weeks ” before the April 17 pretrial conference, i.e., soon after the February 20 letter, and her counsel was unable to find or contact her. See id. at 1116 n. 3, 1117 n. 4. As a result of Ms. Douglas’s conduct, a meaningful dialogue of the sort envisioned by the majority ceased to be possible.5
More fundamentally, any failure of the landlord to pursue a dialogue with Ms. Douglas and her counsel was legally immaterial because the landlord was not responsible for Ms. Douglas’s failure to “fill in the details” and the landlord had no duty to fill in the details itself. The “details” that were necessary depended not on information to be supplied by the landlord, but on information that needed to come from Ms. Douglas herself, the District government, and its cleaning contractor. A landlord’s failure to open and maintain a dialogue with a tenant may be material, and can *1163result in liability under the Fair Housing Act for discrimination, if it thwarts the development, presentation or evaluation of the tenant’s request for a reasonable accommodation and operates as a disingenuous excuse for not granting that request.6 Cf Jankowski Lee & Assocs. v. Cisneros, 91 F.3d 891, 895 (7th Cir.1996) (“Petitioners’ denial of Rusinov’s request based on their lack of knowledge of the extent of his injury is simply a ruse to avoid the penalty for violating the FHA.... If a landlord is skeptical of a tenant’s alleged disability or the landlord’s ability to provide an accommodation, it is incumbent upon the landlord to request documentation or open a dialogue.”). But Ms. Douglas makes no plausible claim that her landlord’s inaction frustrated her efforts to provide the requisite specifics for her accommodation request. Ms. Douglas simply needed to work with the District to produce a reasonable cleaning plan that the government would commit to fund and carry out, or at the very least a firm timetable for the District to develop and commit to such a plan; except insofar as her disappearance probably made it impossible,7 it remains an unexplained mystery why her counsel and the District failed to do the necessary work by the time of trial. In this mystery, the landlord had no part.8
As to the second reason offered by the majority, that it would have been “fruitless” for Ms. Douglas to proffer “more detail” about her accommodation request because the trial court (supposedly) “forestalled further inquiry” by ruling against her on other grounds, it too is flawed. If anything is clear from the transcript, it is that even as of the day of trial, Ms. Douglas’s counsel had no “further detail” to proffer. If the trial court had allowed Ms. Douglas to put on her discrimination defense, it would have fallen flat on its face, because she had no evidence to present. Briefly put, her counsel did not know and could not proffer how long a stay of eviction would be necessary to develop and implement a cleaning program, what kind of cleaning program the District government might be prepared to fund and institute if given enough time, or even whether the missing Ms. Douglas would permit the District’s agents, whom she distrusted, to enter her apartment to carry it out.9
*1164In sum, I think we should affirm the trial court’s preclusion of Ms. Douglas’s discrimination defense on the ground that she never specifically requested a reasonable accommodation and therefore had no such defense to present.

. The trial judge held that the tenant’s purported experts, James Sutton and Damon Byrd, were not qualified to testify that Ms. Douglas had a mental illness which prevented her from maintaining a sanitary apartment. He so ruled, in part, because neither man knew or understood the meaning of the term "mood disorder NOS,” the malady with which Ms. Douglas had been diagnosed by a psychiatrist who was not called to testify. The division majority characterized the judge's exercise of discretion as "manifestly erroneous,” Douglas I, 849 A.2d at 964, a description that, for reasons set forth in my dissent, id. at 979-84, I regarded (and continue to regard) as an indefensible substitution of the majority’s favored result for a perfectly legitimate discretionary call by the trial judge.
Fortunately, aided by an excellent discussion of this issue in the brief filed on behalf of Ms. Douglas in the en banc court, the majorify has abandoned the division’s troubling articulation and at least some of the division’s reasoning. Although I am still not in full agreement with the en banc majority’s treatment of the issue, see Part VII, infra, I am prepared to assume, arguendo, that Ms. Douglas' counsel presented enough evidence to go to the jury with respect to whether his client suffered from a mental handicap within the meaning of the Act.

. A remand is defensible because the trial judge’s ruling was not based on an explicit finding that counsel for the tenant had failed to propose a reasonable accommodation. Based on the record, however, I have no doubt that in the judge's view, as a matter of law and on the record before the court, the proposal made on behalf of the tenant did not constitute a "reasonable” accommodation within the meaning of the Act.

. "A 'reasonable accommodation' is one which would not impose an undue hardship or burden on the entity making the accommodation,” Andover Hous. Auth. v. Shkolnik, 443 Mass. 300, 820 N.E.2d 815, 821 (2005) (citation omitted), or on other tenants. Id. at 824 n. 17. "[A] reasonable accommodation does not entail an obligation to do everything humanly possible to accommodate a disabled person.” Groner v. Golden Gate Gardens Apts., 250 F.3d 1039, 1047 (6th Cir.2001) (quoting Bronk v. Ineichen, 54 F.3d 425, 429 (7th Cir.1995)).

. The nature and extent of Ms. Douglas’ violations, and the specific regulations which she violated, are set forth in detail in my dissenting opinion in Douglas I. To save a tree or two, I do not repeat this exposition here.

. According to the majority, "the District government had a sound, fiscal reason not to intervene unless the landlord gave assurance that the tenant could remain if the government kept her apartment clean.” The fact is that Mr. Byrd of APS had regular contact with Ms. Douglas for many months before the suit for possession was brought, and did nothing about the condition of her unit when she was not under threat of eviction. The Dis*1149trict’s inaction cannot reasonably be blamed on the landlord's suit for possession.

. The trial judge noted that the landlord "was not out for blood,” was "sorry for the defendant,” "and not anxious to see this poor woman out on the street homeless.” Douglas I, 849 A.2d at 987 n. 26. The majority quotes this passage. As villains go, Kriegsfeld is pretty mild!

. The majority’s recitation, in its "Response to Dissent," of the factual scenario in the Arnold. Murray case does not affect in the slightest the practical wisdom and common sense contained in the sentence that I have quoted from that opinion.

. With respect to the timeliness vel non of Ms. Douglas’ request, I fed the issue more complicated than the majority does, and I reiterate the views that I expressed in Douglas I, 849 A.2d at 994-95.

.If it depended on anyone else — e.g., Ms. Douglas herself — then counsel for the tenant would really have been in a pickle, for by the time the case came to trial, Ms. Douglas had not been around for several months.

. According to Ms. Douglas' attorney, the District took the not especially humane position that it would not clean the unit while the suit was pending because Ms. Douglas might be evicted. For its part, the majority finds nothing unreasonable in the District’s position (as represented by counsel for the tenant) that it would do no cleaning unless the suit was stayed, regardless of the threat to the health and safety of other tenants.

. The majority asserts that much of the elapsed time during which the unsanitary conditions continued "was attributable to the normal requirements of the judicial process.” But as I mentioned in my dissenting opinion in Douglas I, 849 A.2d at 994 n. 35, "nothing was stopping the tenant (or the District) from cleaning the apartment in the interim."

. In light of the legal principles set forth in this dissenting opinion, in Judge Glickman's dissent, and in the last two sentences of Judge Farrell’s concurring opinion — opinions that represent the views of six of the nine judges— the prospects, on remand, of Ms. Douglas’ case reaching a jury (even assuming that she can be found) are slim indeed.

. Apparently, Ms. Douglas met with the District's representatives some twelve days before the trial, refused to come to court, and made herself unavailable to her lawyer.

.
In this respect, the case differs materially from one involving, say, a blind person or a paraplegic, whose affliction is obvious and indisputable. Whether Ms. Douglas’ alleged mood disorder constituted a handicap within the meaning of the Act was an open question when, according to my colleagues, the landlord violated that statute by pressing its suit to judgment. If, as the judge concluded, Ms. Douglas was not handicapped, then the landlord was not required to offer her an accommodation.
Douglas I, 849 A.2d at 993 n. 34 (dissenting opinion).
It is also significant that the claim that the failure of the landlord’s attorney to respond to the February 20 letter violated the Fair Housing Act was first asserted by the division, not by counsel for Ms. Douglas. Id. I explained this in Douglas I:
According to the majority, the landlord violated the Act by not responding to a letter dated February 20, 2002, from the tenant's attorney, and thereby failing to engage in a “constructive dialogue" with the tenant. The majority asserts that the trial judge erred by not taking note of this failure on the landlord’s part and by not ascribing fault to the landlord. This alleged trial court error comes "out of the blue,” for no claim was made to the trial judge, or in this court, that the lack of a response to the tenant’s letter violated the Fair Housing Act. Moreover, the letter from the tenant’s counsel on which my colleagues' theory rests is barely mentioned, if it is mentioned at all, in the tenant’s brief, and never in reference to any claim of a refusal by the landlord to negotiate.
849 A.2d at 973 (footnote omitted).

. Jankowski Lee & Assocs. v. Cisneros, 91 F.3d 891 (7th Cir.1996), relied on by the majority, is not contrary to Groner and Lapid-Laurel, but deals with a different issue. The court there held that if a landlord was skeptical about the tenant’s claimed condition, "it is incumbent upon the landlord to request documentation or open a dialogue,” id. at 895, about the condition. The court gave no indication that the Act requires the landlord to engage in a free-wheeling "interactive process,” or to respond to every letter sent to the landlord on the tenant’s behalf.
According to the “Joint Statement” of the Department of Justice and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Reasonable Accommodations Under the Fair Housing Act (May 17, 2004), ”[a]n undue delay in responding to a reasonable accommodation request may be deemed to be a failure to provide a reasonable accommodation.” Assuming, ar-guendo, that the February 20 letter constituted a "reasonable accommodation request,” the landlord had no crystal ball, and Kriegs-feld therefore was not on notice of this "Joint *1154Statement” twenty-seven months before it was issued.

. Andover Hous. Auth. is distinguishable from the present situation because, in this case, there has been no trial. One might fairly infer from this record, however, that, as a matter of law, Ms. Douglas was not a "qualified” handicapped person; the burden that she had placed on the landlord and on her fellow-tenants for a year demonstrated that her condition could not be readily accommodated without help from the District that, for the entire period, had not been forthcoming, and which was most unlikely to become suddenly available.

. According to the majority, the extended duration of the unsanitary and unhealthy conditions was the fault of the landlord for not replying to the essentially content-less February 20 letter from counsel for the tenant. See Douglas I, 849 A.2d at 998-99 (dissenting opinion) (quoting that letter in its entirety). The majority also attributes the delay in reme*1156dying the Housing Code violations to the "normal requirements of judicial process that landlords risk having to accept from the business they have chosen to pursue.” In other words, say my colleagues in the majority, "tough, you are a landlord, you chose your own way of making a living, and you should expect to have to tolerate the filth, rodents and stench for a long period of time without whining about it!” But the majority's "blame the landlord” approach notwithstanding, the tenant's attorney could not have settled the case even if Kriegsfeld's counsel had responded to the February 20 letter; no settlement proposed by opposing counsel can be achieved unless the client agrees to it, and Ms. Douglas was nowhere to be found! Moreover, the "normal requirements of the judicial process” often take a very long time, and if a tenant claiming to be suffering from alcoholism and a mood disorder is not deemed responsible for the effect on others of her violations of the lease and the housing code, then there is in effect no prompt protection for such a tenant’s landlord and fellow-residents, even if, as in this case, the conditions imperil their health and well-being.

. If a sober and mentally unimpaired tenant were to violate the Housing Regulations one quarter as badly as Ms. Douglas did, he or she could properly be evicted for noncompliance with the terms and conditions of the lease. If the landlord were to evict that tenant but let Ms. Douglas stay on, however, then I suspect that the explanation for the different treatment would fall on deaf ears — not only of the evicted tenant, but also of the tenants as a group and of most ordinary citizens. Indeed, as noted in the leading discussion of the kind of issue presented in this case, "a property manager may lose other residents as a result of the conduct of one [allegedly] disabled resident.” Reasonable Accommodation & Direct Threat, 36 IND. L. REV. at 761. The pro-' tracted toleration of Ms. Douglas’ tenancy assuredly did not come as a boon to her neighbors.

. In the Crossroad Apts, case, the landlord’s motion for summary judgment was denied.

. Or of any other “color.”

. My conclusion is, I think, buttressed by Ms. Douglas’ emphatic and absolute refusal of any psychiatric help. Jennifer L. Dolak has written persuasively on this particular subject:
When a mentally ill person's abusive conduct arises from failure to take prescribed medication, the appropriate accommodation may be that continued residence be conditioned upon taking the medication.
Reasonable Accommodation & Direct Threat, 36 IND. L. REV. at 782. In this case, as Ms. Douglas’ attorney acknowledged in his brief to the division, Ms, Douglas’ refusal of treatment was evidently quite categorical; she did not even stay around, and, being absent, could not agree to this condition.
It is said that God helps those who help themselves. Here the court apparently believes that the law helps those who don’t help themselves, or at least one of their number, even when there has been no testimony that her alleged mental illness — consisting of alcohol addiction and mood disorder NOS — renders her completely helpless. I apprehend that the majority’s approach in this case will serve as an unfortunate precedent in cases involving people with disabilities, for the court seems to require no effort at all from this allegedly handicapped tenant; she is treated as if she is so helpless that she cannot be expected to take responsibility for any of her actions or try to do anything at all on her own behalf, and her failure to take responsibility is totally excluded from the court's "reasonable accommodation” calculus.
I cannot and do not claim any psychiatric expertise, but common sense surely tells us that if we do not expect, require, or encourage any effort from a person suffering from a handicap, then no effort is likely to be forthcoming. For example, an addict is unlikely to seek treatment and to tty to stop drinking or using if her addiction provides her with privileges which are denied to a sober person. Cf. Dupree v. United States, 583 A.2d 1000, 1005 (D.C.1990) (concurring opinion) (a rule denying the “addict exception” to mandatory minimum sentencing to a defendant who tests "clean” while on pretrial release would "provide an insidious but compelling motive to any addict to give in to the perverse compulsion to use the drug and not to try to fight it”); id at 1004 (majority does not disagree with concurring opinion). Surely the Fair Housing Act was not meant to provide allegedly handicapped persons with an incentive not to help themselves.

. In this case, ten months had passed since the notice to cure or quit was served, and much longer than that from the beginning of the violations.

. The problem in Ms. Douglas' case was not noise, but dangerous and unsanitary noncompliance with the Housing Regulations.

. Here, the resident manager testified at trial that the filth and stench had continued unabated.

. This phrase, unfortunately misquoted in my dissent in Douglas I as "shape up and fly right,” comes from the song Straighten Up and Fly Right, words and music by Nat King Cole and Irving Mills.

. I think it appropriate to comment briefly on the majority's "Response to Dissent”:
1. According to the majority, accommodating Ms. Douglas' alleged disability would have been a trivial matter. "Plainly, no undue burden on the landlord is called for here.” Plainness, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder. As of the trial date, the landlord and its other tenants had already been burdened by the most severe housing code violations (and threats to health and safety) for about a year. The only explanation for the majority’s position — consistent with the entire tone of the opinion — is that the past is irrelevant and that the interests of Ms. Douglas’ fellow-tenants are too peripheral to merit consideration.
2. Once again, the majority blames any delay in the case on what it calls the landlord’s "refusal" to respond to the February 20 letter from counsel for the tenant. In my opinion, this ground, which made its first appearance in this case in the division majority’s opinion, is completely spurious. I have dealt with it in some detail in this opinion and, more comprehensively, in my dissent in Douglas I. But even if one were to assume that the landlord had some obligation to respond to this letter, and to "open a dialogue,” the failure to do so could make no difference, for Ms. Douglas’ attorney could not agree to any settlement without his client’s consent, and no such consent was forthcoming. The majority’s cherished "dialogue” would therefore have been a monologue or a Kriegsfeldi-an soliloquy. The majority’s theory that everything was the fault of the landlord founders on this simple undisputed and indisputable fact.
*11603. The majority has contrived to focus on certain facts in Andover Hous. Auth., 820 N.E.2d at 820, while ignoring the legal principles for which that decision stands. It is true that the landlord in that case engaged in negotiations with the tenant (just as Kriegsfeld offered to do here, only to be thwarted by the unavailability of Ms. Douglas). The court held, however, that there was no statutory obligation for the landlord to conduct a dialogue with the tenant, however desirable such a dialogue may be. Id. at 822. The case also necessarily stands for the propositions for which I have quoted in my footnote 3 and elsewhere.

. While the trial court certainly did not abuse its discretion in finding that Ms. Douglas’s witnesses lacked the necessary expertise to diagnose her mental condition, a precise diagnosis was not required in this case. What was required was merely competent evidence that Ms. Douglas suffered some kind of mental handicap that interfered with her ability to maintain her apartment in a safe and sanitary condition. Ms. Douglas’s witnesses were able to provide such evidence based on their personal observations of her symptoms, behavior and circumstances, even if they lacked special competence in mental disorders. See, e.g., de Bruin v. de Bruin, 90 U.S.App. D.C. 236, 237, 195 F.2d 763, 764 (1952) (”[L]aymen who have had a particularly good vantage point for observing the person under scrutiny may express their opinions as to mental capacity to court or jurors who have not had such an opportunity.”). Even if it is debatable whether, or to what extent, the witnesses properly could opine on the causal connection between Ms. Douglas’s mental status and the status of her apartment, the trier of fact could draw the necessary inference.

. This would be a different case if, for example, funding had been approved, an acceptable cleaning plan had been developed, and District officials simply needed a little more time and the landlord’s acquiescence to begin implementing it. The majority opinion contains assertions such as the following: "Here, the tenant has proffered that the D.C. government will clean the apartment and keep it clean. Prima facie that will solve the problem. ...” Ante at 1137. Such assertions reflect a misreading of the record. At most, Ms. Douglas’s counsel was proffering only what he hoped and expected the District government would be willing and able to do. The majority opinion relies on counsel’s opaque statement that his witnesses — a mental health specialist with the Department of Mental Health and a social worker with Adult Protective Services — could "satisfy” the landlord that the District government would "get the place cleaned up.” Id. at 1117. Since no plan had been developed and funding had not been approved, that statement counts for little.

. Of course, as the majority opinion concedes, the February 20 letter supplied no detail at all as to the accommodation that Ms. Douglas sought.

. Thus, I think the majority opinion is not describing this case when it says, for example, that "the details about tenant cooperation, the strength of the government’s commitment, and the frequency of cleaning would likely be spelled out with some precision when the landlord participates and insists on particulars before deciding whether, from its viewpoint, the accommodation would be reasonable.” Id. at 1137.

. The majority opinion asserts that Ms. Douglas's "unavailability for settlement discussions” is not "legally determinative of anything.” Id. at 1137 n. 4. Her unavailability for reasonable accommodation discussions, however, was "determinative” of everything, for it made it impossible for her counsel even to propose a reasonable accommodation for the landlord’s consideration.

. Judge Ferren’s opinion reasons that "a landlord's failure to engage in the required dialogue relieves a tenant from any need to proffer additional specifics beyond those required for a coherent, ostensibly feasible proposal that would allow a reasonable jury to find that if all its elements were implemented, it would accommodate the tenant’s handicap and cure her default, presently and for the future.” Ante at 1142 (emphasis added). Notwithstanding the tenor of Judge Ferren’s opinion, however, a majority of this court is of the view that Ms. Douglas has not yet presented such a "coherent, ostensibly feasible" proposal. Simply asking for more time to explore with the District government the possibility of coming up with a cleaning plan is not the same thing.

. On June 5, 2002, twelve days before trial, Ms. Douglas evidently surfaced briefly for a meeting with James Sutton of the Department of Mental Health and Damon Byrd of Adult Protective Services. The majority's apparent view that this last-minute, momentary reappearance by the tenant was timely, ante at 1140, stands in marked contrast to its view that the landlord's initiation of a dialogue two weeks before trial came too late.

. It may be, as Ms. Douglas’s counsel stated, that District government officials would not agree to clean Ms. Douglas’s apartment if she was going to be evicted anyway. Ante at 1117. Such a position in no way prevented District officials from specifying what the government would be willing to do to enable Ms. Douglas to remain in her apartment.

. ”[W]ho is to say,” the majority rhetorically inquires, "that the tenant's counsel would not have been able to find his client with the good news that her defense would go forward (assuming that her presence was essential to that *1164defense)”? Ante at 1143. I suppose anything is possible, but the fact remains that Ms. Douglas’s counsel had tried to find her "many times” without success. Id. at 1116 n. 3. In considering whether the trial court properly precluded the tenant's defense, speculative possibilities are not a substitute for lack of evidence.