Mary Valencia v. City of Springfield, 883 F.3d 959 (2018)

Citation: Mary Valencia v. City of Springfield, 883 F.3d 959 (2018)
Parent Document: Mary Valencia v. City of Springfield, 883 F.3d 959 (2018)
Jurisdiction: United States (federal)
Effective Date: 2018-03-01
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4473714/mary-valencia-v-city-of-springfield/ ↗

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The Board of Zoning Appeals denied the request for a var-
iance, stating that the proposed home would constitute a “fla-
grant violation of the state’s distance requirement.” Id. The
Board also cited the neighbors’ safety concerns, and con-
cluded that the proposed facility could impose “undue costs,
expenses, and other burdens on the City.” Id.
    After the facility sued for violations of the FHAA, the dis-
trict court granted partial summary judgment in its favor,
finding that Milwaukee failed to provide a reasonable accom-
modation. Id. at 781. We affirmed. In our opinion, we first
stated that Milwaukee’s zoning code and variance procedure
were “not in and of [themselves] an accommodation.” Id. at
785. We further held that the facility “sufficiently established
that the [variance] was reasonable and necessary to provide
[the disabled residents] with an equal opportunity to enjoy
housing in a residential community in Milwaukee.” Id. at 787.
Specifically, we stressed that the individual plaintiffs “re-
quire[d] a living arrangement where supportive services
[were] available twenty-four hours a day” and was “wheel-
chair accessible,” and noted that neither plaintiff could afford
to purchase their own home. Id.
    In contrast, we held that Milwaukee failed to prove “either
that the accommodation was unreasonable or that it created
an undue hardship.” Id. We stated that the prospective neigh-
bors’ public safety concerns could not “be based on blanket
stereotypes about disabled persons rather than particularized
concerns about individual residents.” Id. at 786. Moreover,
“[Milwaukee’s] own engineer testified that the proposed
group home would not have a significant adverse impact on
traffic and therefore [would] not, in this fashion, impose any
financial or administrative burdens on the City.” Id. Similarly,
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