WASHINGTON — Attorney General Karl Racine has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the District of Columbia Housing Authority (DCHA) for forcing hundreds of vulnerable residents to wait years for accessible housing.
The suit alleges that the agency demonstrates an egregious pattern of discrimination against individuals with disabilities and systematically fails to provide needed disability accommodations, like transfers to wheelchair accessible units, for public housing tenants.
In a press release, the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) said DCHA has failed to respond to complaints from residents, and the lawsuit is a result of that inaction.
“This complaint makes clear that DCHA has repeatedly failed to fulfill its legal responsibility to accommodate District residents who have physical disabilities with housing units that are safe and accessible," said Racine in a statement. “After seeking to persuade DCHA to address these safety and quality of life issues, we had no choice but to file this case to ensure that the disabled tenants receive the accommodations that the law requires.”
DCHA owns and manages more than 8,300 public housing units across 56 properties and provides homes for close to 50,000 District of Columbia residents, including very low-income families, seniors, and people with disabilities. Of DCHA’s tenants, at least 45% are seniors, have a disability, or both.
OAG alleges that DCHA has violated the District’s anti-discrimination protections and consumer protection laws by:
- Failing to provide accessible housing to DC residents with disabilities: DCHA has forced tenants with disabilities to live for years in housing that the agency itself has determined does not meet their needs. For example, DCHA approved a tenant to move to a wheelchair-accessible unit in January 2017. At the time, the tenant lived on the fourth floor of an apartment building without an elevator and was forced to rely on others to carry her up and down the stairs so she could attend medical appointments or leave her apartment. This tenant died in late 2021, still waiting for a wheelchair-accessible apartment. Today, more than 250 DCHA tenants who have been approved for accommodations are still waiting for those accommodations to be implemented, including many who have been waiting for more than four years. At times, DCHA has offered tenants units that are uninhabitable—because they are infested with cockroaches and rats—or units that do not actually accommodate their disability. When tenants turn down these inappropriate units, they may be improperly dropped to the bottom of the waitlist.
- Trapping disabled residents in opaque, disorganized bureaucracy: Housing providers are required by law to work with tenants to find alternative, interim solutions if necessary disability accommodations can’t be immediately provided. DCHA not only fails to work with tenants to find alternative accommodations, it traps them in confusing bureaucracy. DCHA is unresponsive to tenants, and tenants are rarely informed of expected timelines, kept up to date on the status of the implementation of their accommodations, or informed of reasons for delays. Additionally, DCHA’s disorganization and lack of appropriate processes has resulted in tenants being improperly removed from waitlists and critical records related to approved accommodations being lost.
The lawsuit is seeking a court order to stop DCHA from continuing to violate the law, restitution for DCHA tenants who were harmed by its unlawful conduct, and other forms of relief.
This is not the first time Racine has sued DCHA. In 2020, Racine sued the housing authority for failing to address illegal activity at 10 public housing properties. As a result of that lawsuit, DCHA agreed to make major security upgrades and perform additional maintenance those properties.
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