Author Archives: Peter Sanford Kahrmann

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About Peter Sanford Kahrmann

Writer, disability rights advocate, civil rights advocate.

Civil Rights Complaint Filed Against WinnResidential with Massachusetts AG

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I filed a Civil Rights Complaint against WinnResidential and others with Massachusetts State Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell.The AG filed a lawsuit on October 4, 2023 against WinnResidential/Olmsted Green in Dorchester, Massachusetts alleging, wait for it, that Winn violated the rights of tenants with disabilities.


The allegations against Winn are horrifying; one tenant with a medical condition asked Winn to wear masks when around her when COVID struck, and they didn’t.


I can understand Winn not wanting me in the office because the last time I went to the office, I asked Property Manager Kayla Bennett what law or regulation allows Winn to suspend handicap parking permit accommodations and she responded with, “I won’t answer your question,” and then, when I asked again, said she would not answer the question and asked me to leave the office.


If defamation is the action of slandering a good reputation, the only defamation Winn may be suffering is self-inflicted.

Boston Landlord WinnResidential Reveals Miracle

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An attorney for a Boston-based landlord says the landlord can take away handicap-parking privileges from elderly tenants with disabilities and not put them in danger, simultaneously.

Now, that’s a miracle! 

Serious medical conditions must be present to get the permit in the first place. 

I’ll tell you how I found out about this miracle. I received a letter from Winn’s attorney, Katherine Higgins-Shea of Lyon & Fitzpatrick. She was rejecting my reasonable accommodation, on Winn’s behalf, in which I asked them to stop endangering lives in real time because it traumatizes me, secondary to my disability. 

My disability is the combined challenge of managing a brain injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I was held up and shot in the head at point blank ranger in 1984. The bullet remains lodged in my brain.  Knowing lives are endangered around me in real-time puts me is traumatizing.

Imagine my relief when I learned that, as far-fetched as this does sound, lives were not being endangered at all when Winn takes aways handicap parking rights. 

According to Higgins-Shea, WinnResidential, headed by Gilbert Winn and crew, Winn “strongly disagrees that it is placing anyone on the property in physical danger through its rules, policies or practices,” one of those practices is making elderly tenants with disabilities move their cars unsafe distances and unsafe conditions.

Winn is owner and landlord of two over-55 apartment buildings, in Ludlow, Massachusetts. Tenants up into their 90s, with disabilities, are told to move their cars (in snowy, wintry conditions) or they might get towed at their expense, because Winn wants to clear snow. 

Never mind that doctors have documented that one or more of the following conditions applies to the tenant:

  • Can’t walk 200 feet without stopping to rest.

  • Can’t walk without the assistance of another person, prosthetic aid, or other assistive device.

  • Tenant is restricted by lung disease.

  • Tenant uses portable oxygen.
  • Tenant has a Class III cardiac condition.

  • Tenant has a Class IV cardiac condition.
  • Tenant has Class III or Class IV functional arthritis.
  • Tenant has Stage III or Stage IV anatomic arthritis.
  • Tenant has been declared legally blind.

  • Tenant has lost one or more limbs.

Now, that’s a miracle!  Don’t believe me? Don’t blame you. Ask their attorney, Katherine Higgins-Shea: KHigginsshea@lyonfitzpatrick.com 

Massachusetts Landlord Does Not Deny Endangering Senior Tenants & Violating Disability Rights

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Winncompanies Property Manager Kayla Bennett in Ludlow, Massachusetts and her surrounding management team do not deny Winn’s parking-lot policies endanger the lives of tenants and violates the rights of seniors with disabilities with legally issued handicap parking placard or plate. Bennett oversees 170 apartments for seniors.


Asked Friday by this tenant what gave Winn the legal right to take away legal handicap parking privileges, Bennett said, “I will not answer your question.”


When asked why Winn endangers the lives of tenants by forcing them to move their cars in snowy icy weather, Bennett gave the same answer. “I will not answer your question.”

Bennett then asked me to leave the office.

Bennett is not the only member of Winn management not to answer the question regarding the violation of seniors rights and the rights of people with disabilities. Others include, Leanne Chalifoux, Caitlin A. Laplante, Erik Pietz, none, including Bennett have answered emails asking them the same questions.

As detailed by the NIH’s National Institute for Aging. To get a disability plate or placard, one or more of the following apply to you.

You:
•   Cannot walk 200 feet without stopping to rest.
•   Cannot walk without the assistance of another person, prosthetic aid, or other assistive device.
•   Are restricted by lung disease.
•   Use portable oxygen.
•   Have a Class III cardiac condition.
•   Have a Class IV cardiac condition. according to the standards set by the
•   Have Class III or Class IV functional arthritis. according to the standards set by the American College of Rheumatology
•   Have Stage III or Stage IV anatomic arthritis. according to the standards set by the American College of Rheumatology
•   Have been declared legally blind.
•   Have lost one or more limbs.

Choose Kindness

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If choosing kindness over aggression is believed by some to be weak, then what makes it so hard for so many to be kind? After all, if kindness is weakness, shouldn’t it be easy?

I believe reality teaches us that acts of kindness, responding with nonviolence rather than violence, talking rather than shouting, takes strength. Pure, unadorned, strength.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has been one of my heroes since I was a little boy. Our family’s pastor, Reverend Wilbur O. Daniel, marched with Dr. King. I don’t know anyone who thinks Dr. King was weak.

The question is, what makes it hard for so many of us to choose kindness over aggression? The answer, I believe, is vulnerability. When we’re aggressive whether mildly or not-mildly expressed, no one can be emotionally close to in a healthy way.

Aggression builds a moat around us that makes it all but impossible for anyone to get close to us. Aggression can be an armor that prevents intimacy.

Lastly, there is this. If you look around you at the world we are all in right now, the words from various leaders of all walks of life, wouldn’t it be healing for us all to see kindness and communication and problem solving rather than cruelty, verbal battle, and problem making?

I say, choose kindness.

You Know My Cousin & Happy July Fourth

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Thousands of men and women, including my cousin from way back, gave their lives for our country. My cousin did this in 1776. In fact, he did this when General George Washington and our Continental Army were fighting with all their heart and soul for our independence, our republic, our democracy.


My cousin was a school teacher, can you imagine? In the spring of 1776, my cousin – he was from Connecticut – joined Knowlton’s Rangers, the first organized intelligence service organization of the United States of America led by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Knowlton.


In 1776 there was a planned British invasion of Manhattan. In an attempt to identify the plans for that invasion, General George Washington called for a volunteer to go behind enemy lines. My cousin was the only one to volunteer. It cost him his life.

My cousin is Nathan Hale.

He was executed by the British near 66th Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan.

Were he alive today, Nathan Hale would stand with all Americans who are fiercely bent on protecting our republic, our democracy. He would stand against anyone who posed a threat to this sacred place we call home; when so many members of so many American families have given their lives to protect us.

When he was leaving the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in September 1787, 81-year-old Benjamin Franklin was asked what the delegates had done. Franklin answered: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Our republic is under threat now. As an American, I don’t care what party someone belongs to. One of the great things about our republic is having different parties, different views, varied opinions, and so on.

Different parties should not and does not mean – enemies.

Now, one of our political party’s has lost its way. The world will never be free of people who seek total power over others; that’s why our founders drafted the constitution – to protect our republic. Any threat to the constitution is a threat to you, your family, and our republic. It’s, “We the people…”

Happy July Fourth.