Nine Months of Tape: The Addendum to the Lawsuit

Donna Trump

Friday, October ninth, 3:24 in the afternoon. Less than twenty hours after the Thursday night email telling Idaho Legal Aid to sue. That's momentum, Jesse. That's a man who sent a lawsuit and then decided the lawsuit needed a sequel. And the sequel is bigger, it's longer, and it has more people copied on it. Sequels always do.

Jesse

Thursday at 8:13 at night he says sue. Friday afternoon he says, hold on, I've got more. You send the original, you go to bed, and apparently overnight a whole second set of grievances comes in. The subject line alone is a full sentence. 'Addendum to Lawsuit: Failure to Notify Advocate, Intimidating Notice Rhetoric, and Resulting Harm.' That's not a subject line. That's a table of contents.

Donna Trump

It's a great subject line. Very strong. Nobody can say they didn't know what was inside. And look at the roster. Addressed to Michael at Idaho Legal Aid Services. Copied to Susan, the case manager, whose address is at humansupports dot com. Duncan Mitchell, same company. Tricia Barnes at Idaho Legal Aid. The Boise Idaho Legal Aid general inbox. And then, of course, our old friend, wcmatter3 at Gmail.

Jesse

The mystery guest returns. Same as last time. Nobody in the material tells us who wcmatter3 is, and I'm not going to guess. I'll just say this. In my experience, when somebody's on every email and nobody can say who they are, that's either the most important person in the case or the least. There's no middle.

Donna Trump

Winner or loser, Jesse. Nobody sits in the middle. And listen, we say this every time, so let's say it again. Everything here is Ryan's account. These are his allegations. As far as anything we've been given shows, there's no reply from Idaho Legal Aid and no response from the housing authority. So we're reading one man's email, not a court finding.

Jesse

Right. The housing authority is the Boise City Ada County Housing Authority, and Ryan says it's been doing these things. We take it as what he claims, we look at what he's asking for, and we see how it lines up with the guidance. That's fair to everybody.

Jesse

So the heart of it is this. Ryan says that for nine months, nine straight months, he's asked that his case manager and advocate, Susan, be present for any policy communication with the housing authority. And he says he made it clear, through letters asking for a reasonable accommodation and through direct communication, that any compliance notice or note stuck on his door has to be forwarded to Susan, or she has to be told about it right away.

Donna Trump

And what does he say they did? They taped it on the door. Again and again. Nine months of tape. By his count, never once a call to Susan, never once a copy to Susan. Just tape, tape, tape. Think of the tape budget. Somebody at that housing authority is going through rolls of it, and nobody ever thought, maybe we send one email.

Jesse

An email is apparently a bridge too far. But here's where I slow down, because Ryan makes a specific argument. He admits the formal written agreement on the accommodation was still pending. He doesn't pretend it was signed. He says that even so, the housing authority should have acted in good faith and honored a basic communication need in the meantime. That's his argument, and it's a smart way to put it. He's not saying the paperwork was done. He's saying a decent landlord doesn't hide behind the paperwork.

Donna Trump

That's the smart part, that's the strong part. And the guidance backs up the general direction. The 2004 Joint Statement from HUD and the Department of Justice says a provider has to respond promptly to a request, and that an undue delay in responding may be deemed a failure to provide the accommodation. May be deemed. Those are the words. So the waiting itself can be the problem. Waiting is not a neutral act.

Jesse

And that same document says a request doesn't have to be in any particular form. It can be oral, and it doesn't need magic words. Plus it recognizes that people can have someone helping them, a reliable third party who's in a position to know. I'll be straight though. I don't see anything in what we've been given that says a housing authority has to copy an advocate on every taped notice. That's Ryan's argument for how good faith ought to look. It's not a quote from the book.

Donna Trump

Fair, fair. We're not inventing law here. But the bigger principle is there. If a tenant makes a request, and the answer is silence, that's not an answer. The Joint Statement even says that when the two sides can't reach agreement, that in effect is a decision not to grant the request. So silence for nine months, well, you can see where Ryan is headed.

Jesse

And that's his next point, and I think it's the sharpest one in the whole email. He says that because management never gave him anything in writing, he can't tell whether the accommodation was denied or is still pending. Think about that. Is it a no? Is it a maybe? Is it a file in a drawer? When you're waiting on an answer for nine months and you can't even tell what question is still open, that's a special kind of exhausting.

Donna Trump

It's the classic. Is it denied, or is it pending? Nobody will tell you, and the only way to find out is to keep asking. And remember, the guidance describes an open back and forth, an interactive process. A yes, a no, or a here's what we can do instead. What Ryan describes is a process with no interaction. Just a door.

Jesse

Which brings us to the workaround. Ryan says because they never told Susan, he had to. So he checks his door. He sees a notice. He takes a photo. He sends it to Susan, and he says he's been notifying Michael and Susan himself. His words are that this forced workaround has been incredibly time consuming and exhausting.

Donna Trump

He's become the unpaid courier for the other side's mail. The housing authority writes the notice, tapes the notice, and Ryan photographs the notice, sends the notice, and tracks the notice. And as he tells it, the one person the accommodation was supposed to help is the one doing the work. That's a lot of unpaid labor, Jesse. Tremendous labor.

Jesse

And plain talk, the whole point of asking for an advocate is that you shouldn't have to carry the whole load alone. If the answer is, fine, you carry it and also you're in trouble if you drop it, then the accommodation isn't an accommodation. That's Ryan's claim, anyway, and I think a reasonable person can see why he'd feel that way.

Donna Trump

Now the best part. The patience war. Ryan says the lease violation notices use harsh, threatening language. He quotes two lines. One, that his 'behavior will not be tolerated.' And two, that management has been 'very patient with me.' Very patient. With me.

Jesse

And he does not take that quietly. He says the exact opposite is true. He's the one who's been extraordinarily patient, nine consecutive months, completely cooperative, putting in what he calls enormous effort to cure the alleged violations without the support of his advocate. Notice he says alleged. He's not conceding those violations. He's saying even on their terms, he tried.

Donna Trump

Who's more patient? A contest! A patience contest. On one side, a housing authority that, by Ryan's account, taped paper on a door and waited. On the other, a tenant who photographed that paper nine months running and wrote it all down. I know who I'd pick. I'd pick the guy with the photos. Photos win. Every time.

Jesse

Let me be careful, because this part isn't about who wins a trophy. Ryan says that the language caused him severe paranoia, worry, and enormous anxiety. He says he lived in constant fear that more lease violations were coming and that he was on his way to being evicted from his unit. Those are his words, and they're a serious thing to put in writing. Whatever you think of the legal strategy, that's a person saying he's been afraid in his own home.

Donna Trump

Right, and that's why the language matters. A notice isn't just a piece of paper. When it says 'will not be tolerated,' it's telling you where the line is, and which side of it you're standing on. And if you can't get a straight answer about your accommodation, you're guessing about that line every single day. That's how you get paranoia, and exhaustion, and dread. Ryan's claim is that management did that.

Jesse

Then he closes it out like a man who has done this before. He tells Michael to make sure the lawsuit formally addresses the nine month pattern of failing to act in good faith, the forced burden of processing these documents, the intimidating rhetoric, and the paranoia, exhaustion, and constant fear of eviction. And then a deadline. He wants an acknowledgement of receipt as soon as possible and within no more than seven days.

Donna Trump

Seven days! I love a deadline. As soon as possible, and also within seven days. It's urgent, but with a cushion. And I'll note, if you count it from Friday afternoon, that's a clock that's already running. Nobody's responded that we can see. But that clock is running.

Jesse

And then we reach the thing I've been waiting for. The notice. Same one as last time, the reservation of rights. 'I reserve the full right or the opportunity to revise, amend, clarify, correct, supplement, withdraw, retract, edit, reinterpret, or otherwise modify any statement, position, characterization, representation, or communication contained in this electronic mail herein at any time and without prior notice.' And then, I swear, it says NOTICE again, and pastes the whole paragraph a second time.

Donna Trump

Twice! Pasted twice! In a row! It's the most protected email in Boise. He reserves the right to withdraw, retract, and reinterpret his own email, and then he reserves it again, in case the first reservation changed its mind. That's belts and suspenders and a second pair of suspenders.

Jesse

The old line is, say it once and say it plain. But I'll give him this. A man who spent nine months being told things in a way that couldn't be pinned down might fairly want a way to unpin himself. It's a funny paragraph, but I understand what it's protecting against. Nobody likes being held to words they can't take back, and everybody likes it when it's the other guy.

Donna Trump

So here's where we land. Ryan says for nine months the notices went on the door and the advocate never got a call. He says he did the work himself. He says nobody told him yes or no. He says the housing authority called itself patient, and he says he was the patient one. And he wants all of that in the lawsuit, with a reply inside seven days. Those are his claims. The housing authority's side we haven't heard, and there's no reply from Idaho Legal Aid on the record either.

Jesse

And that's the honest ending. One email, sent less than twenty hours after the last one, one tenant, one door, and a lot of tape. If the guidance is any measure, the question that matters isn't who was louder or who wrote the longer email. It's whether anybody answered, and when. We'll see if anybody does.