requirement by DSI and it needs to be not just for appeals, but it has to be for
complaints. In this case, we filed in February an initial complaint that gave a heads up
that this was an issue, and then the expert report at the end of February. We filed a
thorough complaint, as I've ever filed in federal court. It's an expert report that would
pass certainly. We wanted to make sure that when the city was evaluating this
application, it understood what was at stake. It isn't just a technical legal violation it is
the health and safety of every tenant family there, including children. What we
discovered in the documentation is that there was an initial concern. We have an
e-mail from Angie Weise sent an email shortly after we submitted on March 2, 2023.
Ms. Weise send an e-mail to a lot of her senior staff and to Mr. Sass and Ms.
Ferkinhoff, saying in the passing of Steve Ubl who is the City Building Official, and
said that she's concerned and says, “has the contractor tested for lead and asbestos?
Are they taking precautions, as is required if there's lead and asbestos present.” You'll
hear Greg Myers say those are 2 of the 3 right questions to ask. Has there been
testing to confirm there is a lead and asbestos, and if there hasn't been, is there a
presumption led and asbestos being there? The law dictates what that will be
fundamentally if it’s for lead its before 1978, and for asbestos I don't think there's a
strict timeline from what I can remember, but you look at the materials that are going
to be disturbed. In both situations she's asking the right questions and there would be
a presumption that much of the renovation work they're doing, and we can see it's
millions of dollars through the renovations of its exteriors, its new pool area, new units,
new common area, a new office. That's major stuff, and even if you don't have to drill
down, you'll see that's implicating those laws. Then when you drill down which Greg
Myers did as best as he could in his report, then you're like no this is a no go right
here. The first thing we did long before this rent increase appeal when we noticed this,
I think last June and July, is when we started to get alarmed. We wrote a letter and
said can you provide the same questions that Ms. Weise is asking? Can you give us
the inspection reports, or can you give the documentation that you need to keep and
maintain that you're doing all the precautions? Because when we interviewed people,
we saw none of it. In fact, we saw ongoing renovation, which there is none of that
signage, there was none of the different things you need to do in order to make it safe
for this community of 216 families, many of them with children and elders, we were
concerned. They just never sent to us the documentation, Mr. Mark at Marquette. This
is back last year, and I just want to say we've been concerned about this for a while.
Mr. Myers at that point is when he began looking into things. I think in late June of last
year he toured the facility and interviewed different people and gathered information.
This was a long-standing concern we raised with Haven, with Marquette, the property
owners, and Ms. DeLisle. We wanted to make sure when this application was being
filed that the city was fully aware was at stake there. That's why we submitted the
report. What we find is that after Ms. Wiese expressed a very professional concern, we
go into a black hole largely. What we do have is on April 7th, an email from Mr. Sass
to Ms. Ferkinhoff. On 4/7/2023, Mr. Sass writes, “Good Day, Ashely (probably meant
Angie) is wondering about the status of DSI’s investigation into the report on Haven.
We don't see any other evidence on DSI investigation into the report on Haven except
for some building stuff. We're not sure what that means but could suggest there's
much more going on that we know. This is our legal theory since their habitability
concerns and habitability is key to an approval we need to get this sorted out to avoid
being sued.” That's what he writes continuing from email, “Angie moved our meeting to
the morning. I figure we can ask her then.” I assume that's Ms. Wiese but I'm not
sure. Let's break this down, there is an investigation into the expert report on lead and
asbestos at Haven. I mean, it’s something you don’t necessarily see in many of the
documents from DSI. There's an admission that they have a duty to make sure that
habitability is key to approval, so we need to get this sorted out to avoid being sued. I
don't know what that last phrase means to get it sorted out. Do we mean to finish the
investigation to make sure it's safe or is it that we need to get it sorted out in some
other way, so it doesn't become a technical issue. I don’t know but that's the end of it.
That's the last internal document we have on the investigation until the report that was