Recent Court Rulings

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Facts: A Section 8 resident lives with her severely disabled adult daughter. As a Section 8 participant, the resident receives a monthly rent subsidy, or “housing assistance payment,” the size of which varies depending on her income. The family also participates in a state social services program designed to help incapacitated persons avoid institutionalization. The In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program compensates those who provide care for aged, blind, or disabled individuals incapable of caring for themselves.

Facts: A resident sued HUD, alleging physical and economic injury resulting from deficient maintenance of her housing complex. The resident claimed that the site’s management and the local PHA didn’t respond to her complaints regarding “a broken refrigerator, water leakage and damages, serious mold, bed bugs, roaches, structural, electrical, and other issues.” She claimed that their failure to respond to her complaints caused her and her four children to become ill and to be hospitalized on various occasions.

Facts: A group of residents sued the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) in federal court for familial discrimination and allegedly depriving them of their property right to a habitable residence free from dangerous conditions. They asked the court to appoint an independent monitor to oversee NYCHA’s lead-based paint remediation efforts.

Facts: A group of residents filed a class action lawsuit against a PHA. The residents claimed that the PHA’s actions with regard to the site’s bedbug infestation amounted to a violation of their due process rights. They claimed that the PHA’s extermination methods exacerbated the infestation and injured the residents.

Facts: In March 2012, a resident and her four children died after a fire spread from the kitchen of their apartment. The estate of the deceased sued the local PHA for negligence and wrongful death. They claimed that the PHA failed to ensure that “properly working and accessible smoke alarm/detectors were properly installed in the decedent’s apartment unit.”

Facts: A former resident sued the local PHA and its property manager for retaliating against her in violation of the First Amendment for participating in tenant advocacy activities. The resident was involved in organizing tenants at the public housing site from 2010 until 2012 to protest a proposed mandatory drug-testing program for public housing residents.

Facts: A resident sued an owner for fraud and concealment based on alleged misrepresentations made when the resident was a prospective tenant looking to rent a unit at the site. In November 2008, at the time the resident was looking at an apartment, he “made several inquiries about the quietness and crime in the neighborhood,” and an employee informed him that there was very little criminal activity and only mentioned “occasional noise from a restaurant across the street.”

Facts: A site manager notified an applicant that her application for housing wasn’t accepted “because a credit check has revealed that [she] ha[s] a negative credit history[,]” which was “verified through TransUnion.” The credit report referenced in the manager’s letter indicated a “high risk fraud alert” for the applicant, apparently because her “current file address does not match input address(es).” The report also revealed two creditor accounts with past-due amounts totaling $407, and a December 2015 civil judgment in t

Facts: One night, a site manager observed a resident’s guests arriving at the site in an impaired state, and unwilling (or unable) to cooperate with security. An on-site police officer who served as the community liaison to the local PHA, conducted an investigation into complaints about guests. As he approached the resident’s apartment, he heard loud voices coming from inside and smelled the odor of “some sort of substance.”

The administrator of an estate of four family members who died in an apartment fire sued the local PHA and the fire department for negligence. The apartment had only a single point of ingress and egress, namely, a second-floor door that opened onto a porch and an external staircase. Because the building lacked fire escapes, the only means of leaving the apartment was through that door.