The city’s Fair Housing Commission held a second hearing on April 7 to consider a tenant retaliation case filed by Kadi Ashby, president of the Alden Park Tenants Association, against L3C Alden Park Apartments.

The case initially was heard on Jan. 7, but the commission ran out of time to complete the hearing and continued it. The April 7 hearing concluded the process, with the commission reviewing the testimony and hearing closing arguments from both parties’ lawyers. The commission did not say when it would issue a decision.

​The issue at the Germantown apartment complex began in September, when Ashby received a formal notice from Alden Park’s property management, Point Management Group, under Ram Partners LLC, informing her that they had decided not to renew her lease and would not provide a reason.

Ashby then reached out to property management and, in an email exchange provided to the Local by Ashby, Alden Park’s management told her, “For year–to–year leases that are not renewed, we do not provide additional information. While I understand this may be frustrating, the decision not to renew your lease stands.”

During the Jan. 7 hearing, the lawyers representing Alden Park and their management team, RAM Partners, pointed to a post Ashby made in a chat used by residents as the reason for her nonrenewal.

In the chat, Ashby posted realtor.com and zillow.com listings for homes belonging to executives at the company that owns Alden Park and wrote, “I wanted to see where our money was going, the presidents of [L3C Capital Partners], the company that owns Alden, and their multi–million dollar houses.”

The landlord’s team claimed that the intent of the post was to incite violence against the L3C executives.

At the April 7 hearing, Madison Gray, a Public Interest Law Center attorney representing Ashby, said, “I think what we’ve seen here today is that this is a rare retaliation case where the landlord has already admitted that they are attempting to evict Ms. Ashby and other tenant association leaders because of their involvement in organizing.”

Gray emphasized an email from L3C’s team submitted as evidence, which said they needed to “focus on the two to three ring leaders of the association.”

She argued that the email proved management was targeting them as the reason for the nonrenewal, rather than the post made by Ashby in the chat used by residents.

“After that message was sent, there’s been no testimony that any tenant was taking any action to go visit that property, to go to canvas the property, to go picket outside the property, to even send a letter to the landlords. It was just a matter of crystallizing the unfairness of the situation,” Gray said.

Ann Schildhammer, the lawyer representing the landlords, concluded with, “Obviously, we disagree that there is any retaliation here … There is no legal precedent whatsoever that just because her action [didn’t cause] others [to] follow through that that would not be a nuisance.

“Kadi Ashby intentionally published private information. Yeah, you can say it can be found on Zillow, or what have you, but she intentionally did it for a purpose, and that purpose was to incite the community to instill fear in the actual owners.”