New lawsuit alleges Maplewood's nuisance ordinance discriminates against minorities, people with disabilities and domestic violence victims

The Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing and Opportunity Council (EHOC) filed a federal housing-discrimination lawsuit on March 13 against the City of Maplewood, alleging that Maplewood's "chronic nuisance ordinance" violates the Fair Housing Act on the basis of race, sex, and disability.

"Maplewood enforces this ordinance in a way that punishes people for seeking help, including residents with disabilities and survivors of domestic violence," said Will Jordan, executive director of EHOC. "Although Maplewood claims this promotes public safety, this chronic nuisance ordinance does no such thing. Instead it makes the community less safe by discouraging crime victims from contacting the police."

Under this ordinance, Maplewood revokes the occupancy permits of residents who are deemed "chronic nuisances" because their households have generated two or more police calls within 180 days. It does not require that person in the household have been convicted of crime, and it enforces the ordinance even against a resident who is a victim of crime. Revoking a resident's occupancy permit effectively exiles that person from the city for a period of time ? because it is a crime to live in Maplewood without an occupancy permit. Hundreds of municipalities around the country have adopted versions of such a nuisance ordinance in recent years. Studies have shown that such ordinances can be severely discriminatory in practice, Jordan said, and they believe Maplewood's is as well.

Maplewood officials have not yet responded to the St. Louis American's request for comment.

EHOC filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, after a "painstaking" investigation into the way the city enforces the ordinance, said Kalila Jackson, EHOC's senior staff attorney.

"The City of Maplewood has one of the most erroneous nuisance ordinances in the country," Jackson said.

Reviewing five years of data, EHOC investigators found that 55 percent of the enforcement action are against African Americans, in cases where we the race if the household could be identified. Black residents make up only 17 percent of Maplewood's population. The lawsuit claims that the ordinance is enforced "selectively" and ignores "similar conduct" by non-black residents.

Additionally, 25 percent of the enforcement actions were taken against people with disabilities, and 37 percent rose out of incidents of domestic violence, Jackson said.

The ordinance is also enforced regardless of whether or not the resident was seeking help or was the victim of domestic violence, Jackson said. In one case, a suicidal man's occupancy permit was revoked for making too many calls for medical assistance, Jackson said. Another resident suffering from depression had his occupancy permit revoked for a "peace disturbance" after his girlfriend made a police call to report that he was considering committing suicide. In other cases, Maplewood deemed the survivor of domestic violence a "nuisance," revoking her occupancy permit or putting her permit on a probationary period, thus precluding her from calling the police again.

Gretchen Arnold, assistant professor of women's and gender studies at Saint Louis University, has done multiple studies looking at the impact of local nuisance ordinances on victims of domestic violence.

"Nuisance laws trigger the women's evictions from their homes, causing them to lose their eligibility for government housing assistance, and leaving many homeless or in unstable housing conditions," Arnold said. "They also discourage battered women from calling 911 for protection, which can cause the relationship violence to escalate and puts them at greater risk of serious injury."

Once evicted, Arnold said these women are labeled a nuisance in landlords' databases and have more trouble renting new apartments, often having to move to more dangerous neighborhoods with their children.

EHOC is represented by the national civil rights law firm Relman, Dane & Colfax PLLC and local civil rights attorney Thomas Kennedy, III, L.C.

"It is remarkable enough that Maplewood claims the power to banish people from the city who haven't been convicted of any crimes," said Sasha Samberg-Champion of Relman, Dane & Colfax. "Unsurprisingly, that authority has been abused. There is no legitimate reason to target African-American residents for much harsher enforcement. And it is simply cruel as well as illegal to punish people for being abused or for having a disability."

Disability advocates have lent their support to EHOC's enforcement of the Fair Housing Act's protections for families and individuals with disabilities.

Places for People provides community based, recovery-oriented services for adults living with severe and persistent mental illness. Joe Yancy, executive director of Places for People, said their clients are often negatively impacted by local nuisance ordinances due to a broader lack of understanding on how to engage individuals with disabilities.

"We applaud EHOC's effort to ensure equal housing opportunities for all people regardless of their disability by promoting trauma-informed interactions with law enforcement and city officials," Yancey said.

Additionally, national experts on nuisance ordinances are supporting the local advocates' suit. Thousands of local governments across the country have enacted nuisance property or crime-free ordinances under the guise of advancing public safety, said Kate Walz, Director of Housing Justice at the Shriver Center and a national expert on these laws.

Walz said, "Local governments should consider other, more legal methods for improving public safety, such as working directly with renters as partners to improve the quality and safety of their housing."