A family’s 20-year search for a handicap-accessible apartment in public housing has ended in a court settlement that will force the city’s housing authority to change the way it deals with prospective tenants — and with the family who brought the lawsuit still searching for a home that fits their needs.
The long and difficult tale of Gaston Roberge’s quest to find an affordable place for him and his family to live began more than two decades ago when Roberge, his mother Rosa Vadi Arcelay, and his sister Maria Rivera Vadi first applied to the New York City Housing Authority for an apartment at one of its 302 developments.
By the time the family finally secured a home in 2019, Rivera Vadi, a paraplegic, had died and the NYCHA apartment her two surviving relatives had secured turned out to be almost impossible for Arcelay, who’s confined to a wheelchair, to move about in.
“We knew that we didn’t have the money to rent like other people. We knew this wasn’t going to be a palace,” Roberge told the Daily News. “But this has been really stressful for us. My sister died waiting for an apartment.”
After monitoring the family’s application for years and enduring red tape at every turn, Roberge learned in September 2019 that a handful of NYCHA apartments had become available — and that his family had been given priority — not due to his mother’s disability but because he’s a victim of domestic violence, a fact he claims to have informed NYCHA about as far back as 2013.
According to their complaint, the first apartment the family viewed in the LaGuardia Houses was not wheelchair accessible, so they rejected it. But when they did, it led one NYCHA employee to inform them of the authority’s “three strikes” rule — basically, that if they reject three units, their application would be closed, essentially sending them to the back of the line.
In his mother’s complaint to NYCHA, Roberge and his family claim that after hearing that and after viewing a second apartment, which was under renovation at the General Grant Houses in Harlem, a NYCHA manager told him that once the work was complete the apartment would be wheelchair accessible.
That, Roberge said, did not turn out to be the case. He didn’t find that out, though, until after accepting the unit.
“It was impossible,” he said.
Tight spaces in the kitchen and the bathroom meant that Arcelay could not access her own refrigerator without assistance, or bathe without the help of her son. The situation became so untenable that eventually Arcelay, who is 82, moved to Florida to stay with friends
Roberge became so frustrated with the prolonged search and the results that he contacted Legal Services NYC. Last year, their attorneys filed a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court claiming NYCHA violated a laundry list of laws and policies, including the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and its own rules.
In an interview with the Daily News, one of Roberge’s attorneys, Iris Bromberg, acknowledged that the scarcity of housing in NYCHA isn’t only a problem for the disabled, but for virtually anyone trying to find an affordable place to live. Still, she noted, this specific case also hinged on “NYCHA’s failure to comply with their legal obligation.”
“Based on our experience, it seems like a lot of folks encounter the same barriers to safe and affordable housing. Just even working on this case, we met with and were contacted by many tenants navigating the same barriers,” Bromberg said. “More generally, in New York City there isn’t that much accessible housing that is affordable and available to low-income folks.”
But in the end, Roberge got some results.
His legal saga ended earlier this week in Manhattan federal court when a judge approved a settlement agreement between NYCHA and his legal team that requires the housing authority to revise the forms it provides to prospective tenants applying for housing, specifically when they’re seeking an accommodation for being handicapped.
Under the deal, NYCHA will have to update transfer request forms so tenants can specify that the reason for a request has to do with handicap-accessibility issues, as well as why the apartment is inaccessible. The new forms also must note that a prospective tenant’s rejection of an inaccessible apartment won’t count against them, as it might have previously under the so-called “three strikes” rule.
“Our clients really desperately wanted systemic reforms, and so they pushed for them,” Bromberg said.
NYCHA spokeswoman Rochel Leah Goldblatt said the housing authority is “committed to providing reasonable accommodations for those who need them.”
“We are pleased to have resolved this matter,” she said.
Roberge and his mother may also find relief for themselves.
Arcelay is once again living with Roberge at the Grant Houses, but the settlement provides them with a Section 8 voucher that they can use to find accessible, affordable housing somewhere else.
Roberge is optimistic, but knows all too well that finding a new place will be a challenge too. Many of the apartments that take Section 8 vouchers are in old buildings that aren’t wheelchair accessible.
“It’s kind of a repetitive cycle. Even with a Section 8 voucher, you’re working with the same system,” he said. “You have to apply for a lottery.”
