Los Angeles to pay $38.2M to settle accessible housing lawsuit

The City of Los Angeles will pay $38.2 million in a settlement agreement stemming from a 2017 case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on behalf of a disabled resident. The DOJ alleged the city had “fraudulently obtained millions of dollars in housing grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by falsely certifying that the money was being spent in compliance with federal accessibility laws.”

The settlement, announced this week by the DOJ and previously reported by The Associated Press (AP), will go in part to disabled resident Mei Ling and the Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley, a disability rights advocacy group. Their shares have not yet been determined, according to the reporting.

The initial lawsuit alleges that the city and its community redevelopment agency ”received federal money by falsely promising to create accessible housing for people with disabilities. Instead of creating accessible housing, they used the money to create inaccessible housing that deprived people with disabilities an equal opportunity to find housing of their choice.”

Ling, now 57, has been confined to a wheelchair since 2006, and since then has either been homeless or living in inaccessible housing, the lawsuit stated, adding that for at least six years, the city did not make affordable housing options accessible to certain disabled people. Dwellings included steep slopes, countertops that were too high for those in wheelchairs and doorways that were not wide enough to allow wheelchair access.

DOJ also alleged that the city violated the False Claims Act for failing to “maintain a publicly available list of accessible units and their accessibility features,” and that “the city, on an annual basis, knowingly and falsely certified to HUD that it complied with these grant requirements despite its failure to do so.”

Attorneys representing the city denied that a False Claims Act violation took place, according to comments shared with the AP.

“Nonetheless, we are pleased to have reached this $38.2 million settlement, particularly in light of the federal government’s initial claim that it was entitled to well over $1 billion in alleged damages,” Los Angeles city attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto said in a statement to the outlet.

A similar lawsuit against the city was previously settled in 2016 for $200 million.