Recent Court Rulings

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Facts: A local PHA sought to evict a resident because of the criminal conduct of her grandson. The trial court granted the eviction, but did so based on grounds that weren’t included in either of the two eviction notices served on her or in the complaint filed against her.

Facts: A resident sued the local PHA for allegedly depriving her of her due process rights by failing to give her an informal hearing to challenge: (1) the PHA’s calculation of her 2010 housing subsidy; (2) the PHA’s use of an inflated estimate of her income; and (3) the PHA’s failure to exclude her son and his income from the household promptly. The resident argued that the PHA didn’t conduct a timely inspection of her residence, in violation of HUD regulations and the administrative plan.

Facts: A site manager sought to relocate a Section 8 resident from her two-bedroom unit to a smaller unit because the manager deemed the resident ineligible for the subsidized two-bedroom unit. The resident had occupied the two-bedroom unit since 2005, when she initially shared it with her daughter. But after her daughter moved out, she maintained the two-bedroom unit despite the regulation, because she asked and was granted permission from the manager to do so.

Facts: Three days prior to a resident’s death, her daughter sought the site manager’s permission to reside in her mother’s unit. The daughter stated that she resided in the unit since 2004 at the request of her mother, who was sick and required a liver transplant.

Facts: A resident challenged the termination of her Section 8 housing assistance for failure to attend monthly income-recertification hearings. In August 2012, she applied to the local housing authority to transfer her Section 8 voucher from another city, certifying in the process that she had no income. The housing authority approved her application and issued a voucher, subject to its rule that benefit recipients claiming zero income must appear in person each month to recertify their zero-income status.

Facts: An owner started eviction proceedings against a resident for operating a daycare business in her unit, which is located in a HUD building where the resident had lived for 35 years. On the date of the trial, attorneys for both parties entered into a formal agreement to resolve their dispute.

Facts: In 2010, a fire in a unit took the lives of a Section 8 resident and her guest. Their bodies were found on the third floor of the unit, and an autopsy confirmed that both women died from smoke inhalation. The third-floor bedroom lacked a smoke detector and an alternate means of egress—even though the unit was required to have both safety features under the Housing Choice Voucher program in which the owner participated.

Facts: A resident sued the site owners for use of an allocation clause in the resident’s lease. The clause requires a resident to specifically and in writing designate his monthly payment as “rent” or “for rent” for it to be considered as such. The clause allows the owners to apply undesignated payments from a tenant first toward outstanding maintenance charges, late fees, or legal fees, and then to rent.

Facts: A PHA terminated a resident’s tenancy after determining that she had breached its rules and regulations. In May 2011, the police executed a search warrant for the resident’s unit. The search warrant was obtained based on two incidents where an informant observed an unidentified male bagging crack-cocaine for distribution and a firearm. During the search, police found approximately 47 plastic bags of marijuana, a starter pistol, business records of narcotics transactions, and two plastic bags containing smaller plastic bags.

Facts: After using her key to enter the lobby of the building, a resident was deterred by the presence of two men standing in front of the elevator. The resident testified that she didn’t “trust anybody in that building” and declined their invitation to enter the elevator. She went outside and waited until she saw two elderly Hispanic women enter the building. All five persons got onto the elevator when it arrived, and the resident pressed the button for the seventh floor.