Harris v. Cmty. Hous. Mgmt. Corp.

District Judge Andrew Krause¹

DECISION AND ORDER Plaintiff Ronald W. Harris, Sr. (“Plaintiff”), proceeding pro se, brings this action against Defendants Community Housing Management Corp. (“CHMC”) and Huguenot Housing Associates, LLC (“HHA”) (CHMC and HHA are collectively referred to herein as “Defendants”²), asserting claims for disability discrimination under the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). ECF No. 13 (Amended Complaint). Currently before the Court is Defendants’ motion for summary judgment (ECF Nos. 60, 72³). For the reasons that follow, Defendants’ motion is GRANTED, and the case is dismissed as moot. I. BACKGROUND A. Procedural History Plaintiff commenced this action by filing a Complaint on August 17, 2017. ECF No. 2. On October 11, 2017, then-Chief Judge Colleen McMahon issued an Order to Amend, granting Plaintiff “leave to file an amended complaint within sixty days of the date of this order to detail his discrimination claims.” ECF No. 6 (“Order to Amend”) at 1. Judge McMahon explained that Plaintiff, “a disabled double-amputee senior with two mechanical legs, asserts that [CHMC] discriminated against him by failing to provide him with a parking spot near the entrance of his building, the Huguenot House in New Rochelle, and then retaliated against him for requesting one.” Id. at 2. In the original Complaint, Plaintiff named as Defendants CHMC; Eugene Conroy, the President of CHMC; “Community Housing Management Staff”; Roberta Fox, CHMC’s Housing Manager; Nebelil Coulibaly, the Superintendent of Huguenot House; John Savage, a CHMC employee who worked at Huguenot House; Garrie Pest Control; Kenneth Saltzman, counsel for CHMC; and the New Rochelle Police Department. Id. As described by Judge McMahon, the original “209-page complaint — relying exclusively on correspondence and court submissions dating from 2014 to 2016, as well as copies of statutes and regulations — does not include a statement of facts or indicate that Plaintiff is entitled to any relief.” Id. Among the facts that Judge McMahon derived from the original Complaint were the following: On June 14, 2016, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”) accepted for filing Plaintiff’s complaint for housing discrimination and notified CHMC that Plaintiff’s claims arise under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Rehabilitation Act because CHMC receives federal financial assistance (Section 8). HUD referred Plaintiff’s FHA claims to the New York State Division of Human Rights (“DHR”) for investigation and retained jurisdiction over the Title VI and Rehabilitation Act claims. (Compl. at 24.) In response to Plaintiff’s claims with DHR and HUD, CHMC created two handicapped spaces in Huguenot House’s parking lot on July 21, 2016. (Id. at 72, 74-75.) In a letter dated July 27, 2016, Plaintiff claimed that the two handicapped parking spaces created by CHMC were not ADAcompliant because they were not “across from the building entrance”; he also claimed that he did not have access to the newly created handicapped spaces. (Id. at 8.) ECF No. 6 at 2-3. Judge McMahon explained that the allegations related to then-defendants Garrie Pest Control, Coulibaly, Savage, and the New Rochelle Police Department derived from previous entries into Plaintiff’s apartment to conduct extermination work, and that Plaintiff alleged that Conroy and Fox took bribes from Garrie Pest Control. Id. at 3-4. Saltzman was named as a defendant “because he represented CHMC in various actions that Plaintiff initiated.” Id. at 6. Judge McMahon dismissed Plaintiff’s claims against Garrie Pest Control, Savage, Coulibaly, and Saltzman for lack of subject matter jurisdiction because they neither arose under federal law nor fell within the Court’s diversity jurisdiction; dismissed the claims against the New Rochelle Police Department for failure to allege a federal claim against any New Rochelle police officer; and dismissed “Community Housing Management Staff” from the action as an improperly named defendant. Id. at 5-9. Plaintiff was granted Plaintiff leave to amend his complaint “to detail his ADA, Rehabilitation [Act], and FHA claims against CHMC, Conroy, and Fox,” but Judge McMahon cautioned that “[b]ecause Plaintiff’s amended complaint will completely replace, not supplement, the original complaint, any facts or claims that Plaintiff wishes to maintain must be included in the amended complaint.” Id. at 8. Plaintiff filed an Amended Complaint on April 4, 2018. ECF No. 13 (“Am. Compl.”). The Amended Complaint, which is the current operative complaint, names only three defendants — CHMC, Huguenot Housing Associates, LLC, and Owner of the Huguenot House — and asserts federal jurisdiction on the ground that Plaintiff’s claims arise under the FHA, unspecified federal civil rights law, and the ADA. Am. Compl. at 2. Despite the dismissal of Plaintiff’s claims against Garrie Pest Control, Savage, and Coulibaly for lack of subject matter jurisdiction in the Order to Amend, the Amended Complaint includes allegations against Coulibaly, Savage, and Garrie Pest Control related to entry into Plaintiff’s apartment to exterminate. The only difference is that Plaintiff labels these allegations discrimination, harassment, and retaliation, citing the FHA and “U.S. Civil Rights Law.” See Am. Compl. at 5-7. Nonetheless, the labels do not transform the allegations into federal claims; moreover, none of these parties are properly identified as defendants in the Amended Complaint. While courts “liberally construe pleadings and briefs submitted by pro se litigants, reading such submissions to raise the strongest arguments they suggest,” McLeod v. Jewish Guild for the Blind, 864 F.3d 154, 156 (2d Cir. 2017) (per curiam) (quotation marks omitted), even the most liberal construction of Plaintiff’s pleadings does not permit the Court to conclude that Plaintiff has properly pled actionable federal claims against Coulibaly, Savage, and Garrie Pest Control. Accordingly, to the extent the Amended Complaint could possibly be interpreted to attempt to raise claims against Coulibaly, Savage, or Garrie Pest Control, those claims are dismissed for the same reasons articulated in Judge McMahon’s October 11, 2017 order. The only potentially actionable claims in the Amended Complaint are for disability discrimination in violation of the FHA and ADA⁴ against Defendants CHMC and Huguenot Housing Associates, LLC based on their alleged failure to provide Plaintiff with an accessible parking space. Following the filing of the Amended Complaint and Defendants’ answers, see ECF Nos. 18-19,⁵ the parties engaged in discovery. At the conclusion of discovery, Defendants sought leave to file a motion for summary judgment, see ECF No. 53, and a briefing schedule for the motion was set during a conference held on March 18, 2020. See Docket Sheet, Minute Entry for March 18, 2020. B. Factual Background The following facts relevant to the Court’s determination of this motion are undisputed unless otherwise noted and are taken from Defendants’ “Material Statement of Facts” (“Defs.’ St. of Facts”)⁶ and the evidence submitted by the parties in connection with the motion. Plaintiff has an apartment in Huguenot House, a federally subsidized housing facility in New Rochelle, New York. ECF No. 62 (“Conroy Aff.”) Ex. 8 (“Conroy Depo.”) at 5:20-6:24; Conroy Aff. Ex. 9 (“Fox Depo.”) at 11:22-12:7; see Conroy Aff.