National Housing Law Project Housing Law Bulletin

DAVID BRADY BRYSON

1941-1999

Our longtime colleague, guide and friend David Bryson died on December 25, 1999, after a difficult six-month struggle with lung cancer. We have lost a great and wonderful person who did so much for so many for so long. David leaves a unparalleled legacy of knowledge and commitment to housing justice, passed on through teaching and writing and through advocating, in phone calls and workshops, in newsletters and books, and in legislatures, agencies, and courts throughout the nation.

It is extremely difficult to accurately describe the meaning of David’s contributions to the National Housing Law Project and its staff, legal services housing lawyers and paralegals, low-income housing tenants, others in need of affordable housing, and housing advocates all across the country for so many years.

To our work, David always brought extraordinary intelligence, an unflagging commitment to housing justice for all people, unparalleled integrity, perseverance in pushing toward the goal, and seemingly endless patience with everyone involved, allies and opponents alike. No one else could carve up a complex housing problem with David’s surgical precision. For that he was always a giant among us. But he was also the gentlest of giants who cast no shadow, remained full of grace and good humor, never harshly disparaged others, and always kept a sparkle in his eye or a smile on his face. He personified the best that humanity has to offer.

David never exalted his own contributions, preferring instead to teach and work closely and calmly with colleagues, advocates, tenant leaders, and policy makers to get the job done – write the pleading, draft the rule or the law, develop and map the theory or the strategy, prepare the article or the book. His work did most of his talking. Because of this collegial and supportive style that has benefitted thousands of advocates and millions of poor people, and the sudden onset and terrible swiftness of his disease, David never received the full recognition his work so richly deserved.

This year, he was recognized in September by the California State Bar with its annual Loren Miller Award for lifetime dedication and commitment to providing legal services to the poor, by the National Legal Aid and Defender Association at its annual fall conference in Long Beach, and by the National Low-Income Housing Coalition. At the NLADA conference, Don Saunders from NLADA and Alan Houseman from the Center on Law and Social Policy each spoke eloquently about what David has meant for them personally and for millions of others whose lives have been improved measurably by David's work, and the standing ovation of hundreds more spoke even louder on behalf of the entire legal services community.

David’s extraordinary housing advocacy career began several years after graduation from Princeton and Columbia Law School, after he first served as a law clerk for Chief Justice Roger Traynor of the California Supreme Court and then as a Faculty of Law lecturer at the University of Ghana. Joining NHLP as a staff attorney in 1970, he took a break from 1973 to 1977 to work as a staff attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance. He returned to NHLP in 1977 to serve as a staff attorney, then as acting director on several occasions, and then as deputy director. Through these many years, David always provided the guiding hand for NHLP and its work.

David also provided the guiding hand for the work of so many other advocates, mostly legal services and public interest lawyers and paralegals. His guidance has been especially important, as housing law is one of the largest areas of legal services practice, and also one of the most complex, especially with respect to federal housing programs that serve people at or near the poverty level.

Alan Houseman aptly called David "the consummate support center attorney" because David used his remarkable intellect, skills, and compassion to improve the lives of the poor in so many ways. David litigated or participated in landmark cases that have established housing rights for the poor; he successfully advocated for laws to advance or protect their interests; he served as a teacher, mentor, advisor, and invaluable resource to thousands of legal services advocates over three decades.

Our friend and colleague Florence Roisman captured his impact as follows, "For every legal services advocate in the United States who is facing a housing issue, the first thing to do is to read what David Bryson has written, and the next thing to do is to call David. No responsible housing advocate would undertake to do anything out of the ordinary without first consulting David."

At the same time, people were always central to David’s work: people and families with low-incomes, tenant leaders, legal services advocates, and allies seeking housing justice. Working with all of them provided the sustenance he needed to persevere so well for so long.

David’s work always focused on establishing and implementing certain core principles that he strongly believed were central to advancing the goal of housing justice for people with extremely low incomes. He was a strong believer in the essential role of the federal government to provide the framework and the resources to implement a shared national commitment for housing justice, with little faith that anything less would prove successful within our lifetimes or that of the next generation. Thus, David’s essential principles included:

• providing and preserving deep subsidies and income-based rents and nondiscriminatory tenant selection policies so that poor people would not be priced out of the "affordable" housing resources provided;

• protecting the deeply subsidized affordable housing stock from being diluted, whatever the cause (whether through poor management and maintenance, gentrification, demolition, foreclosure, or other market forces), through "one for one replacement" and the principle "once subsidized, always subsidized";

• minimizing the involuntary displacement of very low-income residents from their homes and communities by using good cause eviction protections, strict "last resort" criteria to govern the loss to units, and fair relocation protections;

• ensuring procedural fairness to tenants and applicants when HUD or other public agency administrators propose actions that affect poor tenants’ homes, whether the threat came under the guise of stripping away grievance procedures, seeking forfeiture or eviction in a "war on drugs," or a plan to demolish or sell their homes;

• implementing the duties imposed by fair housing and civil rights laws when housing providers or public agencies make programmatic decisions that intentionally discriminate or adversely affect people of color, persons with disabilities, or families with children; and

• keeping all of the doors of justice open to the poor by helping them access both the courts and less formal decision-making procedures to enforce their substantive rights, and by participating in and encouraging tenants to participate in legislative and administrative policy development processes where substantive and procedural rights are created and refined.

David’s contributions in the world of housing litigation were many. He was a precise and insightful student of the law and the courts, whose wise counsel was invaluable to many advocates, raw and seasoned alike. Notable among these achievements were his work on successful cases:

• requiring subsidized owners to provide due process protections prior to increasing project rent levels (Geneva Towers Tenants Organization v. Federated Mortgage Investors, 357 F.2d 547 (9^th Cir. 1974) (Clearinghouse No. 2,971));

• challenging minimum income requirements for admission to federally-subsidized housing (Findrilakis v. HUD, 357 F. Supp. 547 (N.D. Ca. 1973) (Clearinghouse No. 8,026));

• preserving HUD’s lease and grievance procedure against a proposed repeal by the Reagan-Bush Administrations (National Tenants Organization v. Pierce, No. 88-3134 (D.D.C. memorandum and order Jan. 25, 1989) (Clearinghouse No. 43,958));

• ensuring that public housing tenants have access to federal court to enforce federal laws and regulations under Section 1983 (Wright v. City of Roanoke, 479 U.S. 418 (1987) (Clearinghouse No. 33,657));

• preventing the United States from seizing public housing tenants’ homes without any prior notice or hearing (Richmond Tenants Organization v. Kemp, 956 F.2d 1300 (4^th Cir. 1992) (Clearinghouse No. 45,826)); and

• upholding state anti-discrimination laws providing access for voucher holders against challenges of federal preemption (Franklin Tower One v. N.M., 157 N.J. 602, 725 A.2d 1104 (N.J. Supreme Ct. 1999) (Clearinghouse No. 51,172)).

Of course, this brief list does not include the many cases in which David participated or provided essential support and guidance, and those that were unsuccessful in the short-run but that eventually brought more justice through subsequent changes in governing statutes or rules.

Not surprisingly, David’s remarkable litigation record is matched by his highly successful record of legislative and administrative advocacy. David drafted hundreds of proposed legislative changes to the federal public and subsidized housing programs that benefit the poor, many of which became law. And since almost every new law requires regulations , David also provided or organized exhaustive comments to almost all significant proposed HUD regulations over these years. These provisions cover the complete range of procedural protections and substantive rights that benefit federally-assisted tenants and applicants, including administrative hearings and grievance procedures, admissions criteria and preferences that preserve access for poor people, good cause for eviction, utility allowances, income-based rents, exclusions from income for rent-setting, housing assistance for immigrants, and demolition and relocation protections.

Many of these important protections, particularly those concerning targeting of scarce resources, income-based rents, good cause for eviction, tenant participation and relocation, have survived largely intact, despite the far-reaching changes contained in Congress’ 1998 housing bill, which David challenged every step of the way during the several years of its development.

Another still-vital aspect of David’s legacy is his prolific writing and constant teaching, designed to equip other advocates with the knowledge needed for successful advocacy. Invariably comprehensive and precise, his written work included his many contributions to NHLP’s books and Manuals and his regular articles for the Housing Law Bulletin and the Clearinghouse Review. These works ranged from the specific to the global, providing useful descriptions of important laws or regulations or more thoughtful expositions on general national housing policy topics, like the right to housing or the 104^th Congress, or more discrete current issues, such as fair housing or housing preservation. Through this work, he has guided thousands of advocates, even those he never met personally.

David was extremely disappointed by his inability to return to his work during his illness. He was grateful for and most comforted by the many expressions of love and support from his colleagues nationwide.

David’s memorial service was held on December 30, well-attended by many of David’s family, friends, and housing colleagues. We celebrated his caring for others, his humor, his commitment to family, friends, and all people, his invariable integrity, his humility and grace – qualities that clearly distinguished David from many other brilliant people we know. He enriched our lives immeasurably, during a life too brief at 58 years but every moment well-lived. His life was our privilege.

Although we will miss his physical presence, David will always remain close every day in our work. We remain comforted by having enjoyed his life and work for the many years we did share together, and by the lessons of his labors in the pursuit of justice for all.

David's family has requested that contributions in his honor and memory be made to NHLP, at 614 Grand Avenue #320, Oakland, CA 94610. As he would appreciate, his obituary appeared in the New York Times on January 7, and was noted in a brief article on January 10.