investigativevoice.com

By Stephen Janis

It was a chance encounter, an unexpected meeting of two women facing the greatest test of their lives.

One is a poor disabled resident of public housing about to be evicted, the other, Baltimore's most powerful politician, facing potentially career-ending theft charges.

But Thursday afternoon, in an elevator at the Clarence Mitchell Courthouse East, Mayor Sheila Dixon shared a moment with city resident Lakechia Rodriguez that left her and her ex-husband stunned.

“She was very nice,” Rodriguez said of the mayor.

Rodriguez and ex-husband Jason Rodriguez were recently featured in an Investigative Voice story on the challenges faced by residents at the city’s Brooklyn Homes housing project. Their story of her pending eviction over an arrest they said was illegal was part of a series of tales of residents facing eviction there.

But en route to a meeting with city prosecutors in the police misconduct unit on Thursday, the couple was stunned when the elevator doors opened and Dixon was inside. The mayor was leaving the courthouse shortly after jury instructions were handed down in her trial.

“We asked if we could get on the elevator with Mrs. Dixon and she told us to get in," Rodriguez's ex-husband Jason Rodriguez, wrote in an email.

As the elevator descended, Jason began to tell the mayor of his ex-wife’s pending eviction from Brooklyn Homes after nearly 14 years at the South Baltimore housing project.

“Mrs. Dixon listened and took a moment to talk to us about the matter. She got on her phone and called over to the Housing Authority office. Ms. Dixon was able to get in touch with someone from the 13th floor and asked them who we needed to see about the matter,” Jason Rodriguez wrote in an email.

Then Dixon escorted the couple out of the courthouse.

“Lakechia was in tears. Lakechia was also glad that she had finally saw her mayor, and that she may be getting some help,” he wrote.

“Lakechia then asked Ms. Dixon for a hug. Lakechia said, 'With all the things I have been through in the last several months, Ms. Dixon, I need a hug.' Ms. Dixon smiled and said, 'I know what you mean baby; I need a hug too.'”

Then, according to Jason Rodriguez, the most powerful woman in the city and one of its many poor residents, a former assistant manager at a McDonald’s, embraced.

“It was like we had won the Mega Millions. What were the odds of us, running into our mayor and having an opportunity to talk to her about Lakechia's housing issues?"

Dixon spokesman Scott Peterson confirmed the couple’s account of the encounter.

'THE WAY THE MAYOR IS'

“That’s the way the mayor is,” he said.

Unfortunately for the couple, their meeting with housing officials did not go as well as their encounter with the mayor.

“They weren’t trying to hear what I had to say,” said Lakechia Rodriguez, who added that the housing officials were seemingly unimpressed with the mayor’s intervention.

The call from the mayor seemed to curry little favor for the couple, who met in a conference room with three representatives of the department’s legal division.

“The woman from the Legal Department kept cutting in and kept quoting legal terms to Lakechia. Several times the woman from the legal department asked Lakechia, 'Do you understand what I am saying?' and every time Lakechia kept saying, 'No I don't.'

"I kept apologizing," Jason Rodriguez wrote.

"We're not the smartest people, and I know ignorance to the law is no excuse, but we're very ignorant when it comes to this case,” he added.

Lakechia Rodriguez, who is disabled as a result of a serious car accident, is facing eviction due to a dropped charge of marijuana possession — the result, the couple says, of an abusive arrest.

“We explained that she has had three surgeries, has battled suicide because of her medical condition, and that she is unable to take care of herself because she cannot presently work,” Jason Rodriguez said. “We explained that if Lakechia is put out of her home, she will end up homeless and in a shelter. It didn't mean anything to these officials.”

MAYORAL INTERVENTION BE DAMNED

But housing officials, when asked about Rodriguez's case, said even if the courts fail to find someone guilty, the tenant still can be evicted — mayoral intervention be damned.

“With respect to the issue of the charges being dropped, Federal law provides that the disposition of any underlying criminal case is not relevant for determining whether a tenant violated the lease,” said Chevron Porter, spokeswoman for the city Housing Department.

“Criminal charges can be dropped by the prosecutor for any reason, and the burden of proof is much higher in a criminal case. The civil breach of lease action for eviction per HUD regulations is not conditioned on a conviction of the underlying crime,” Porter wrote.

The couple left the housing department deflated, Jason Rodriquez said.

“On our way home we passed Walter P. Carter, the mental hospital. Lakechia said, I think I need to check myself into Walter P. Carter, for I feel like I don't want to live anymore.”

In fact, the couple recently learned that housing officials are trying to deny her the right to appeal her pending eviction based on a legal technicality: that the couple did not submit an affidavit with their appeal notice.

“I’m really worried about Lakechia," her ex-husband said. “What is she going to do?”

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