ST. LOUIS – Navy veteran Kenneth Hansbrough showed us how showering in his apartment can be a treacherous task.

As he is wheelchair bound due to a spinal cord injury; Hansbrough tells us he’s repeatedly asked management at the Charless Place apartments in south St. Louis for an ADA-compliant shower. He says management responded by installing grab bars.

“I try to hold onto here, sometimes there, sometimes here and sometimes there to try to get off in there,” he said. “But they installed it wrong and loosely. I kept emailing them, saying, ‘Listen, this grab bar needs to be fixed.’ They wouldn’t fix it until I fell and got a concussion. I was laid out on the floor. I ended up going to the hospital.”

Hansbrough believes Charless Place’s alleged failure to properly re-install the grab bars violated the Fair Housing Act. His accusation is included in the Housing Discrimination Complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in February 2024.

In the complaint his attorney shared with us, Hansbrough also alleges Charless Place discriminated against him on the basis of his disability by failing to provide a reasonable accommodation of rear gate access needed for safe pickups and drop-offs. Hansbrough is legally blind and doesn’t drive. He uses Metro’s Call-A-Ride service.

“If I got a doctor’s appointment going to wherever, if the driver said, ‘I don’t feel safe going to the front,’ they’ll say ‘I’ll pick you up in the back.’ Well, they couldn’t pick me up in the back because they didn’t have a clicker to the gate,” he said.

The rear entrance to the Charless Place campus requires a remote to open the gate. Hansbrough says residents with vehicles are given remotes to open the gate, but when he requested one to use, he was told:

“Well, you have to have a car is what the manager told me. I said, ‘Well, Call-A-Ride is my car.’”

Call-A-Ride sent Charless Place management a letter on Hansbrough’s behalf, requesting he be granted rear gate access so its vehicles can safely pick him up and drop him off.

“There are people all around here who have clickers and don’t have cars. Both the managers ignored that. They just said, ‘Well, you don’t get a clicker,’” Hansbrough said.

He believes his HUD complaint prompted Charless Place to take legal action against him.

In September 2024, Charless Place filed a motion trying to evict him from his apartment. It alleged Hansbrough was “seen on video breaking and entering through a window.” Charless Place dropped the suit the day the trial was supposed to start.

In March, Charless Place tried to evict him again, this time with an unlawful detainer suit. It alleges Hansbrough didn’t vacate the property after being given 30-days notice. It says his tenancy was terminated due to property damage and his refusal to pay for damages. Hansbrough fears he could soon be homeless.

“I’ve never lived on the street. I don’t know nothing about living on the street, and that’s what really makes me scared to live on the street. I don’t know how to do that,” he said.

Kalila Jackson is representing Hansbrough in this case. She says unlawful detainer lawsuits have limited defenses.

“The Supreme Court of Missouri has determined years ago that when you’re fighting a HUD case, there’s limited defenses in those cases,” she said. “You can’t file counter suits in an unlawful detainer case. But the one right that is preserved is that right to the jury trial—and we do intend to request a jury trial—just to have a jury of his peers here and determine if this is something that should that housing providers should be allowed to do.”

That brings us back to Hansbrough’s HUD complaint. If the results of federal investigation were favorable, Jackson says it could help keep Hansbrough in his apartment. But she fears cuts by the Trump Administration have greatly handcuffed HUD.

“HUD is basically paralyzed. It’s not doing anything with cases with any cases. Most people are just waiting to see at HUD what they’re going to be allowed to do,” Former Deputy General Counsel for Enforcement and Fair Housing at HUD Sasha Samberg-Champion said.

She now works for the National Fair Housing Alliance.

“They have not charged a single case of discrimination in this administration, whether a complicated case, an easy case, a controversial case, a non-controversial case, they’ve equally charged none of them,” Samberg-Champion said.

Hampering HUD’s ability to effectively investigate reasonable accommodation complaints could fuel exploitation of the Fair Housing Act, according to Samberg-Champion.

“I think many housing providers understand right now that HUD investigators are a paper tiger, because even if they find a violation, they’re not going to be able to do anything. They’re not going to be able to demand action or have the case charged. So ultimately, people can just wait HUD out,” she said.

Contact 2’s Mike Colombo asked the attorney representing Charless Place in this suit for an interview. He responded, saying the firm does not comment on active litigation, adding that we should direct our request to Charless Place.

We’ve contacted Charless Place multiple times and have yet to get a response. As for Hansbrough, he’ll have his day in court May 28.

“I’ve just asked for what the law allows and what just there’s no humanity here. That’s what I’m missing,” Hansbrough said.