Category Archives: ADAPT

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.

Equal Rights Are Not a Budget Item

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Bigotry never trumps freedom and freedom is not possible without equal rights.

And so it is that people with disabilities are being told having equal rights depends on the economy, thus relegating them to a budget item.

ADAPT, the country’s most prestigious disability rights organization in this writer’s view, has  launched a Defending Our Freedom campaign to address the carnage being inflicted on the lives of people with disabilities. Across this country state budget cuts are forcing people with disabilities, as well as seniors, back into nursing homes, all this in direct violation of the 11-year-old  United States Supreme Court Olmstead Decision which says Americans with disabilities have the right to live in the most integrated settings.

The Kahrmann Consumer Advocacy Coalition (KCAC)  completely supports the ADAPT campaign.  The KCAC will be seeking to address one of the symptoms of this attack on the rights of people with disabilities when members of its leadership team meet Friday with Mark Kissinger, a deputy commissioner in the New York State Department of Health, and his staff. The state’s DOH has recently issued a directive to providers of services to people with brain injuries living in the community that, if it stands as is, will likely send back into nursing homes and put others at risk.

The survivors themselves have sued the state to stop the carnage.

It is appropriate that this piece is being written on the birthday of Rosa Parks, an extraordinary woman who refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery Alabama and, with that single act of defiance, sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott which led to the end of segregation on the buses and brought Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence.

Treating any minority, whether it be people with disabilities, people who are Gay or Lesbian, people who are black, Hispanic, Jewish,  Muslim, and so on as if they are less than human, is not only illegal, it is a foolish strategy. Why? Because the bigotry that blinds people to the humanity of others  leads them to underestimate the will and resourcefulness of the very people they are dehumanizing.

We are born with equal rights. They are not something we need to earn or be given as a line item in a budget.

_____________________

ADAPT Fights Slavery in 2009

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The nation’s largest grassroots disability rights organization this week unleashed  24 simultaneous protests at Democrat offices across the country including the Democrat National Committee’s (DNC) office in Washington D.C. and Senator Max Baucus’ office in Missoula, MT. Baucas is the chair of the Senate Finance Committee.

In a very real way, ADAPT is fighting slavery. Federal law requires states to pay for institutionalizing seniors and people with disabilities. However, states have to ask permission! to pay for services that would allow seniors and people with disabilities to live in the community. In other words, the law forces people with disabilities and seniors into institutions and robs them of their freedom.

This is slavery. Hard to believe? I hear you. But it’s true. Consider this; forced institutionalization violates the United Nation’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Article 4 of the UDHR reads: No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

How can we call robbing people of their freedom by forcing them into institutions against their will anything other than slavery?

Lest anyone doubt the power and significance of the UDHR, consider this. It is the most translated document in the world.

ADAPT is rightfully demanding Congress eliminate the Medicaid institutional bias this year as part of healthcare reform or by passing the Community Choice Act. ADAPT protested at Democrat offices largely because the Democrats are in the majority. However, I would urge ADAPT to protest at Republican offices as well. One party may be the warden, but all the jailers have keys.

Over the years I have become more and more convinced that bringing injustice into the light is one of the most effective ways of destroying. Moreover, I know of a man who said, “I expose slavery in this country, because to expose it is to kill it. Slavery is one of those monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death.” He also said, “I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted.”

Now I can’t do much about it if you disagree with my belief that bringing injustice into the light helps destroy it. Nor can the man I quoted do anything about it if you disagree with him. He died many years ago. His name was Frederick Douglass.

The Kahrmann Advocacy Center

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Some say its been a long time coming, but I’ve decided to form a not-for-profit company called The Kahrmann Advocacy Center.

There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is my ever-increasing awareness that grievance and complaint policies available to citizens are, in far too many cases, not worth the paper they are written on. There are some  instances where filing a grievance is tantamount to writing your concern on a piece of paper and then throwing it off a cliff. You’ll never hear from it or about it again.

Not acceptable.

All of us have a right to be who we are safely, with equality, in the world we live in. What I am talking about here is, in a word, freedom. The freedom to be who you are.

While the Kahrmann Advocacy Center may find its initial traction in the world of brain injury and the world of disability, its scope must, in the end, be universal. My dream is to see the center advocate for all those who find their rights infringed on. This includes, but is not limited to, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Gays, Lesbians, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, people with disabilities, Veterans, and so forth.

In a recent speech I spoke about the importance of equal rights: “These rights – your rights – will die on the vine of hope if they are not given the water of respect and the sunlight of dignity.”

I’m hoping the Kahrmann Advocacy Center will bring a little water and sunlight to the world.