[ Reply ]
From: Mac McCreight
email: mailto:mmccreight@gbls.org
link: http://
date: 10/24/0 13:51
Date: 12/21/00
Time: 12:25:15 PM
Remote Name: 207.251.188.199
I'm interested in knowing if anyone else is encountering the problem that we're beginning to see in the Boston area and if anyone's thought through a strategy or discussed this with HUD. Since 10/00, clients who had Section 8 certificates and who weren't previously converted over to the voucher program are facing forced conversions. The big problem comes when the landlords refuse to execute the new HAP contracts and lease addendums required by conversion. This is unfortunately not like the situation where an owner gives a notice of lease termination or non-renewal under the regulations (24 CFR 982.311(b)), where the tenant has a good regulatory claim that subsidy payments to the owner continue until the eviction process is complete (including any appeals or any stays of execution that may be available as a matter of state law). Instead, the PHA may use the owner's refusal to execute the new documents by the conversion deadline as grounds for termination of the existing HAP contract, which automatically terminates the lease and any claim of continued susidy payments. (We've even had the situation, with one PHA, that they give the owner and the tenant a "consent form", discussing conversion, but only give them two choices--mutual agreement to execute new papers, or mutual agreement to terminate--which is even worse, because a mutual termination under 24 CFR 982.311(b)means no subsidy payment after the termination date.)
I can't imagine that this is only a problem in Eastern Massachusetts. Others running into this, and what strategies & solutions are working? Obviously we have a state law which prohibits Section 8 discrimination, and so we could sue individual owners claiming that the failure to renew under the new program constitutes unlawful discrimination, absent a legitimate business justification. But it would be far better to have a HUD solution that says that subsidy flows, as with 982.311(b), so that tenants aren't placed at risk of eviction for nonpayment. There are also obvious analogies with the situation where clients are placed at risk of loss of Section 8 due to owner HQS violations (McNeill v. New York City Housing Authority).
In the early 1980's, when HUD used to have "fixed term" Section 8 leases and contracts, and moved to a new "open-ended" lease and HAP contract, we had litigation in Massachusetts about tenants put at risk due to the conversion (Bradley v. Pierce), which eventually settled. We're thinking that we may have to consider some such litigation again if there are similar problems.