NEW YORK — A woman in Manhattan was about to be kicked out of her apartment because she had three emotional support parrots. Federal prosecutors announced a consent order that says she will be paid $165,000 in damages and $585,000 for her apartment.
The issue between Meril Lesser and the board of the Rutherford, a 175-unit cooperative apartment building where Lesser lived with her parrots Layla, Ginger, and Curtis was settled by the consent order that was made public on Monday.
In 1999, Lesser bought an apartment at the Rutherford in Queens’s Gramercy Park area and moved in with her birds.
Charlotte Kullen, a neighbor, began to complain in 2015. „Oh God, I still have dreams where they scream in my head,” Kullen told the Daily News.
The New York City Department of Environmental Protection sent 15 inspectors, but they didn’t find any signs of too much noise.
On February 7, 2016, a tester wrote, “No birds, no screeching, no noise.”
Lesser sent notes from her psychiatrist saying that the birds were good for her mental health, but in May 2016, the Rutherford board started the eviction process.
Lesser moved out and rented out her room to someone else. In 2018, she complained about Rutherford’s housing practices to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). HUD found that there was a good reason to think that Rutherford had broken Lesser’s fair housing rights.
Rutherford decided to go to federal court instead of settling the case, which meant that the Department of Justice had to file a lawsuit, according to Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for Manhattan.
Williams said that the consent decree that was accepted by a federal judge on August 16 is the biggest settlement the federal government has ever gotten for a disabled person whose housing provider didn’t let them have an assistance animal.
Williams said, “This outcome should make all housing providers carefully think about whether their policies and procedures are in line with federal law.”
A lawyer for the Rutherford co-op board named Peter Livingston said that his client was happy with how the case turned out.
The Rutherford must not only pay Lesser $165,000 and buy her co-op shares for $565,000, but they must also make a policy for fair accommodations for service animals and let the federal government check that it is followed.
Also, the removal case against Lesser in the housing court must be thrown out.
Lesser didn’t answer a text message sent to a number that was listed for her.
