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Neighborhood Report

Still looking for a place to call home

Kenneth LaCruz, a disabled veteran with multiple sclerosis, says Mercedes Homes refused to build a wheelchair-accessible home for him.

By ANDREW MEACHAM
Published April 21, 2006

Most nights, Kenneth LaCruz tugs himself into bed in the couch in his living room.

Upstairs, a king-sized bed beckons.

But LaCruz, a 44-year-old disabled veteran with multiple sclerosis, can't climb up the stairs to reach that bed.

For more than four years, he's been trying. He put down a $1,000 deposit to buy a new wheelchair-accessible house in Brandon, with help from a $50,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that helps disabled veterans purchase functional homes.

Instead, LaCruz said, builder Mercedes Homes sold the property he had contracted to buy - and kept his deposit. Another family built on the lot and lives there today.

Hillsborough County sued Mercedes Homes in 2003 for discrimination based on his disability, saying the builder violated the county's human rights ordinance by refusing to build a home for LaCruz. The case is still pending in Hillsborough Circuit Court.

Mercedes Homes declined to comment, citing pending litigation. It has filed statements in court denying that any discrimination took place. The builder's real estate agent told county investigators that Mercedes had tried to work with LaCruz but that he had not cooperated.

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As a young man, LaCruz wanted to build a career in the military. In the late 1970s, the Marines sent him to Okinawa, off the coast of Japan, and California. He switched to the Air Force and worked on cargo planes until 1985.

But a growing numbness on the right side of his body cut those aspirations short. He joined the U.S. Postal Service.

In 1992, LaCruz bought a two-story house in Lakeview Village. The numbness worsened, and doctors diagnosed multiple sclerosis.

By 2001, LaCruz could no longer get upstairs without help. He began looking for a livable, one-story home.

He met Brandon real estate agent Tommy Lovett, another former Marine. In a training accident, he had been paralyzed below the waist. The two men formed a fast bond.

With Lovett's help, LaCruz found Woodberry, a gated subdivision in Brandon where neighbors take walks on quiet streets.

In it, they found the perfect home: a four-bedroom Jacqueline Bay model by Mercedes Homes. With grants from the VA, LaCruz planned to build a house on Berry Bramble Drive. It would conform to VA specifications: doorways at least 3 feet wide and hallways 4 feet wide, a wheelchair-friendly concrete platform outside the front door and a roll-in shower.

LaCruz and Lovett say that those early discussions with Mercedes real estate agent Barbara Lanz came with a warning.

The men allege that while they were talking about a house for LaCruz, Lanz said that Mercedes Homes had experienced problems working with another disabled client and would not want to work with LaCruz.

In court papers, the company denies that Lanz ever told LaCruz that it would not want to work with disabled clients.

In June 2001, LaCruz reached an agreement with Mercedes to buy the home for $243,000. The contract signed by LaCruz and Lanz has a list of modifications including ramps, grab bars, shower specifications and other amenities.

Weeks after the contract, a Mercedes Homes architect showed LaCruz drawings for a standard Jacqueline Bay model, without modifications for a disabled client.

After LaCruz objected, architects drew another set of plans. LaCruz rejected those too. The redrawn plans bore little resemblance to the modifications that Mercedes had already agreed to make, Lovett said.

LaCruz and Lovett lodged a complaint with the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, part of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which investigates complaints of discrimination in housing, and with the county's Equal Opportunity Office.

In January 2003, the sides met to come to an agreement. Instead, Lovett said, a Mercedes representative told him that the company had sold the property on Berry Bramble Drive.

"Their idea was to crush us," said Lovett, who spent the next two years writing letters to government officials and politicians about the case.

He also published a book, Doors Wired Shut, about the case.

"It's not right on the one hand for people to fly a flag saying 'We support our troops,' and then when they get an opportunity to do something for the troops, they don't do it," Lovett said.

In March 2003, Hillsborough County's Equal Opportunity Office filed a lawsuit against Mercedes Homes with funds supplied by HUD. The county's human rights ordinance and the federal Fair Housing Act prohibit making a home unavailable based on disability or refusing to negotiate.

The discrimination suit is the first of its kind that has gone to court, said Gail Williams, a county equal opportunity specialist.

Williams declined to discuss the county's case against Mercedes Homes, but said that builders cannot legally deny reasonable housing to a disabled person.

Last July, Mercedes attorney Patrick Roche wrote to LaCruz's attorney offering to build a Jacqueline Bay model home in a different subdivision in Valrico for "a substantial increase" from the $243,000 price agreed to in 2001. He also said LaCruz could accept a less expensive model in the subdivision.

LaCruz refused.

"After four years, Mercedes wants to throw me a shoe box to live in and be happy," LaCruz wrote to his lawyer.

Since then, he's begun to look for another house. He has narrowed his choices down to properties in Valrico and Apollo Beach.

"I needed a fresh start," LaCruz said.

Driving home on Lakewood Drive, he inevitably passes the Woodberry subdivision.

Houses in the neighborhood have multiplied since 2001, leaving LaCruz all too aware of the financial windfall he has missed.

"I think, this is where I'm supposed to be," he said. "This is where my family is supposed to be."

He keeps his eyes straight ahead.

Andrew Meacham can be reached at 661-2431 or ameacham@sptimes.com.

[Last modified April 20, 2006, 13:09:03]