Rental Complex Allegedly Evicts OCD-Suffering Woman For Being Too Clean; She Responds By Tagging Landlord With Disability-Based Fair Housing Lawsuit

In Sherman, Texas, Courthouse News Service reports:

• A woman with obsessive compulsive disorder sued her apartment complex for fraud and constructive eviction, claiming it wouldn't let her clean her front porch with a hose and beach towels, something she has done her entire adult life.
  
  Karen Ritter says in her disability discrimination complaint that she feels "obsessively compelled" to clean a 7-by-7 square foot concrete area directly in front of her apartment's entrance, but that the cleaning pattern led to her eviction based on a "nonexistent" rule made specifically for her.
  
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  Ritter says that before moving into the Dallas-area apartment, she disclosed to property management that she suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder, "which requires her to live in a home that is cleaner than the ordinary public generally requires," and that she "specifically discussed spraying down sidewalks."
  
  She says she uses the cleaning ritual to avoid exacerbating her disability, and did so undisturbed for more than two years, cleaning leftover debris from landscapers' leaf blowers.
  
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  Michael Hindman, Ritter's attorney, said his client did not need any accommodations for her OCD because her cleaning pattern did not violate any apartment rules.
  
  "No accommodation was necessary because Karen's need to keep the common area clean, while a need related to her disability, was not in violation of any rule or policy of the apartment complex," Hindman wrote in an email to Courthouse News. "Thus no accommodation was needed until a special rule was made just for her, which was discriminatory in and of itself."
  
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  Ritter seeks compensatory and punitive damages for disability discrimination, retaliation in violation of the Fair Housing Act, fraud, constructive eviction and deceptive trade. She is represented by Hindman with Hindman/Bynum in Dallas.

For more, see Evicted for Being Too Clean, Woman Says.