National Housing Law Project Housing Law Bulletin

In Spence v. Gormley, 387 Mass. 258 (1982), the Massachusetts Supreme Court held that a Massachusetts statute requiring housing authorities to have cause to evict residents limits the Boston Housing Authority's right to evict a tenant for violation of a lease by a household member where the tenant can show that she could not have averted the lease violation.¹ The Boston Housing Authority (BHA) recently caused the Court to review that decision when it appealed a lower court's refusal to evict a tenant for breach of a lease clause authorizing BHA to evict if a member of the tenant's household commits criminal activity that threatens the health and safety of BHA employees. Boston Housing Authority v. Bell, SJC 07707 (Mass. July 31, 1998).

The primary issue before the court was whether a 1995 amendment to the Massachusetts statute modified the statutory "cause" requirement when a resident's actions threaten serious harm to a BHA employee. The 1995 amendment authorized housing authorities to dispense with pre-termination hearings in cases where residents threatened serious harm to BHA employees.

After a review of the statute — which had been amended several times since the Court's decision in Spence — and the 1995 amendment, the Court concluded that none of the amendments, including the 1995 amendment, modified the "cause" requirement, and therefore did not make conduct that threatening to BHA employees an incontestible cause for termination. Thus, the Court reaffirmed its earlier decision that a tenant who can show that she could not have foreseen and prevented her son's violence cannot be evicted for cause.

The Court nonetheless vacated the lower court's decision and remanded the case for further findings of fact because it was not clear from the lower court's decision whether it had appropriately placed the burden on the tenant of showing inability to foresee or prevent her son's violence.

¹  Spence v. Gormley, 387 Mass. at 265.