NEW YORK — A woman who was threatened with eviction from her Manhattan apartment because of her three emotional support parrots will receive $165,000 in damages plus $585,000 for her apartment, under a consent order announced by federal prosecutors.
The consent decree announced Monday resolves a dispute between Meril Lesser and the board of Rutherford, a 175-unit cooperative apartment building where Lesser lived with her parrots Layla, Ginger and Curtis.
In 1999, Lesser bought an apartment in the Rutherford House in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park neighborhood and moved there with her birds.
Neighbor Charlotte Kullen began complaining in 2015. “Oh God, I still wake up with nightmares of them screaming in my head,” Kullen told the Daily News.
The New York City Department of Environmental Protection sent inspectors 15 times but found no evidence of excessive noise.
“No birds, no screeching — no noise,” an inspector wrote on February 7, 2016.
Lesser submitted letters from her psychiatrist explaining that she needed the birds for her mental well-being, but in May 2016, the Rutherford board began eviction proceedings.
Lesser moved out and sublet her apartment. She filed a federal fair housing complaint with the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2018, and HUD found sufficient evidence to believe that Rutherford had violated Lesser’s fair housing rights.
Instead of settling the case, Rutherford chose to go to federal court, triggering a legal requirement that the Justice Department file a lawsuit, said Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan.
Williams said the consent decree, approved by a federal judge on Aug. 16, is the largest award of damages the federal government has ever obtained for a person with a disability whose housing provider denied him the right to a service dog.
“This outcome should prompt all housing providers to carefully consider whether their policies and procedures comply with federal law,” Williams said.
Peter Livingston, attorney for the Rutherford Co-op board, said his client was pleased the matter had been resolved.
In addition to paying Lesser $165,000 and purchasing her shares in the co-op for $565,000, Rutherford must implement a reasonable accommodation policy for service dogs and allow the federal government to monitor compliance.
The eviction proceedings against Lesser at the housing court must also be dismissed.
Lesser did not respond to a text message sent to a phone number she had on file.
