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