Support for Silver Oaks Residents Keeps Growing

Residents of Silver Oaks Place now have a new ally in their fight against eviction: the Ohio Attorney General's Office.

Avery Friedman, the Cleveland civil rights attorney counseling the senior residents, said in an interview this morning the attorney general's office reached out to him after hearing residents were denied access to a large community room at the complex — a violation of the Fair Housing Act.

The management at Silver Oaks changed the locks on the community room and limited its hours following a meeting Friedman held with more than 100 residents last week. Previously, every resident had a key to the room, per their lease, providing 24-hour access.

"Blocking access to the community room, everyone appears to agree, is a form of retaliation," Friedman said. "It appears the attorney general's office ... will be joining us in proceeding against the present and future landlords."

Friedman said the move by management to lock the residents out of the community room amounts to statutory housing retaliation.

"What's going to happen is, the attorney general's office is working with the local (Portage County) Community Action Council to draft what are called accommodations letters," Friedman said. "Most of the people that I met with, there are over 100 of them, they’re clearly mobility impaired.

"They’re using walkers. They’re using wheelchairs," he said. "And under Ohio housing law, and actually under federal law, the landlord has to accommodate that. But in order to do that, the tenant has to request the accommodation."

Smaller meeting rooms at the complex that remain open are not fully handicap accessible.

If the property management fails to respond to the accommodation request, then Friedman said they will file another round of "failure to reasonably accommodate" charges with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission.

“In particular, their accommodation will be that they want to be in Silver Oaks until the landlord can find acquivalent housing with the same rent and same amenities," Friedman said. "And once the landlord finds a place, then the landlord can participate with that transition. At this point, all the landlord has done is say ‘Go box up your stuff’ and hold the door open as they leave.”

Owner Tell Real Estate Trust is planning to sell the property to Alabama-based Capstone Development Corp., which intends to turn the 13-acre complex into housing targeted at students attending neighboring .

As a result, the existing residents of the 55-and-older community were given a 60-day eviction notice late last month. They must be out by Oct. 1.

In the meantime, Arlyne Habeeb, director of community outreach services for the Community Action Council of Portage County, said she'll be meeting with representatives from the attorney general's office to talk about how the discrimination complaint residents started to file Monday will change because of the new retaliation complaint filing.

For now, that initial age discrimination complaint is on hold, Habeeb said.

"We’re going to be taking a slightly different strategy than the original one," she said. "That’s what we’re meeting about, so we’re clear on how to do it."

So while the CAC works on drafting the retaliation complaint with the attorney general's office, staff members from both agencies will be checking with residents at the complex to see if they want to file either a retaliation complaint, an accommodations letter or both.

Friedman said he expects as many as 40 to 50 retaliation complaints could be filed as early as today or tomorrow with the Akron office of the civil rights commission.

"What’s intriguing to me is, I think landlords make an assumption that old people are going to fade into the horizon and not really cause trouble," he said. "Some of these people actually fought in WWII. I think the landlord is really underestimating the character of these people."