FOIA Shows Landlord DTN’s Side of Ongoing Public Dispute

Illegal discrimination by landlord DTN against a single mother because she had received government assistance to pay the rent? That’s what’s claimed in a formal civil rights complaint made in August 2022 to East Lansing’s Human Rights Commission.

But DTN’s lawyer said otherwise, telling City Attorney Tony Chubb in an email the real reason the tenant was ejected was “she was late [a]gain and owed a balance.”

The email communications released to ELi by the City of East Lansing in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request show DTN attorney James Gromer told Chubb the tenant owed about $6,000.

ELi reached out to Gromer for comment. According to Gromer, the tenant  “was offered a renewal and did not sign it. This information was provided to her counsel.”

The case offers an unusual instance of the Human Rights Commission (HRC) being asked to enforce the city’s civil rights ordinance against a landlord – in this case, the biggest landlord in town.

The dispute has provided an opportunity for people to learn more about the East Lansing law that prohibits “discrimination based on age, height, weight, sexual orientation, student status, gender identity or expression, use of adaptive devices or aids and legal source of income.”

It’s also provided an opportunity to see how a complaint made under the law is handled.

As ELi has been reporting, the complaint in the case in question was made by Maria Yokich-Grebner, the single mother who was renting from DTN, and her uncle, Mark Grebner, an Ingham County Commissioner, attorney and long-time political consultant.

The complaint provided evidence that Jessica Garcia, representing DTN, told Yokich-Grebner that her lease was not being renewed because “DTN is no longer renewing anyone who received CERA.” CERA stands for COVID Emergency Rental Assistance and was a form of help provided by the federal government during the height of the pandemic.

At one point, Grebner speculated the real reason DTN wanted Yokich-Grebner and her kids out of their apartment complex was that MSU students were returning after the shut-down and landlords find it easier to maintain complexes that don’t blend students and parents with kids, as their lifestyles may clash. If his speculations are correct, while seemingly harder to prove, it would also violate the law because the code prohibits discrimination on the basis of “student status.”

The HRC is charged with looking into complaints made under this and other civil rights laws in East Lansing.

If a landlord is found to have illegally violated the rights of a tenant, the City of East Lansing can opt to take many actions, including stopping the landlord from renting to others. The landlord can, of course, file suit in objection.

DTN has said Garcia had it wrong – telling the Lansing City Pulse in September 2022 that “If something happened like that [text], it would have just been a human error.”

Chubb told the HRC in April, “They never denied that the text message was from their employee” but that DTN “said that, as a result, they had disciplined her [Garcia], she was frustrated and resigned.”

Responding to questions from ELi, Grober wrote in an email on July 31, “There is a written reprimand to Ms. Garcia. We would need permission to provide it to you.”

In April, Chubb said he hadn’t been able to reach Garcia to get her side. Using the same information Chubb had been supplied by Grebner, ELi reporter Dustin DuFort Petty quickly reached Garcia. She said she was not reprimanded – and that she had resigned.

Garcia also said she had given Yokich-Grebner the exact information (concerning her lease not being renewed because of CERA funding) as she was instructed to give by DTN.

The complaint has dragged on since August 2022. For a year, DTN has said little publicly about the complaint while the HRC has struggled with the question of what to do. Grebner has grown increasingly irritated, noting that few tenants in a position like his niece have an uncle like him to vigorously defend their rights.

Looking to move things along, on June 12, the HRC went into closed session to discuss the matter with Chubb. When they emerged, they voted to ask City Council to use its subpoena powers to investigate the matter. So far, Council has not publicly discussed the matter.

DTN had been declining to answer questions from ELi, so we took another path to try to learn their side of the matter.

Under Michigan’s public records law, news organizations like ELi can be denied documents covered by “attorney-client privilege.” But because communications between City Attorney Chubb and DTN’s attorney Gromer are not between an attorney and their client, and because Chubb represents the City (a public entity subject to FOIA in Michigan), ELi was able to obtain their written communications through FOIA.

Those records show that, at the behest of the HRC, Chubb communicated with Gromer, DTN’s attorney, starting in September 2022. What the obtained communications show is that Gromer steadily insisted to Chubb the real reason for not renewing Yokich-Grebner’s lease was her repetitive failure to pay on time.

“Clearly there was no policy to not renew [the leases of tenants who received] CERA dollars,” Gromer wrote to Chubb on March 2. He provided copies of letters and other records that purport to show that other tenants who received CERA funding were offered lease renewals.

Writing on April 27, Gromer told Chubb the tenant in question “skipped owing 6k [$6,000] which has been lost in all of this.”

Gromer went on to say, “In the end, DTN has proven that Grebner has in fact been untruthful and the text message from the employee [Garcia] is incorrect. It has to be incorrect. All the people from this property was offered a renewal.”

“DTN is being defamed based on a completely fictitious claim of discrimination,” Gromer concluded to Chubb. “We really need this to be done. Thanks for the help.”

Shown Gromer’s claims, Grebner has provided ELi the ledger of his niece’s account with DTN. We then shared it with Gromer, who has not disputed the authenticity of that ledger.

While it shows Yokich-Grebner had a history of late payments, it also shows that, on June 29, when Garcia told Yokich-Grebner her lease would not be getting renewed because she had had CERA funding, Yokich-Grenber owed DTN a zero balance.

How did she go quickly from that zero balance to owing DTN $6,000?

The answer is that, without a signed lease, Garcia counted Yorkich-Grebner as “overstaying” her tenancy. On July 22, DTN started charging her $150 per day in “holdover fees,” which adds up to $4,500 per month. (The base rental fee of the apartment had been $995 per month.)

Grebner said a court would likely find that $150 per day holdover fee illegal, because Michigan law says such charges must be “reasonable,” and charging a tenant 450% of their base fee for overstaying would not be considered reasonable.

And, Grebner said, the only reason Yokich-Grebner was a “holdover” was because DTN illegally refused to renew her lease. As noted above, Gromer said she was ultimately offered a renewal.

Once DTN started charting her $4,500 per month in rent and did not resolve the situation in a way he considered reasonable, Grebner and another family member helped Yokich-Grebner and her children get out of the DTN apartment to other housing.

The whole scene made Grebner angry enough to file the joint complaint. He has said he worries about what DTN is doing to tenants who don’t have a pesky uncle who is an attorney willing to fight.

The current City Council has expressed interest in helping people on the lower end of the income spectrum to reside in East Lansing. While this case involves what amounts to an allegation of discrimination on the basis of socioeconomic class, as of yet, there’s been no publicly visible action by the Council in terms of investigating, supporting or dismissing the complaint.

The HRC next meets on Monday (Aug. 14). The meeting is expected to start at 7 p.m. at the Hannah Community Center.