What Happened: In 2016, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA)-owned and managed Ocean Bay public housing community converted to semi-private ownership under the Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) program. When a tenant who obtained a Section 8 project-based voucher (PBV) after the conversion died, NYCHA sought to evict her adoptive daughter who was living the unit. While acknowledging not being the tenant of record, the daughter claimed that she had succeeded to her mother’s voucher rights, which were attached to the unit. NYCHA insisted that the PBV rights were portable and that it had ported the household’s Section 8 voucher to the tenant’s son in Connecticut, leaving nothing for the daughter to inherit. 

Ruling: The New York court issued an eviction order but stayed its execution to give the daughter a last chance to prove her succession claim. 

Reasoning: Under HUD regulations, for units receiving federal project-based Section 8 benefits which remain subject to Section 8 subsidies after the household vacates and must be re-rented, the tenancy is so “intertwined” with the subsidy that remaining occupants must prove their eligibility to inherit the subsidy to inherit the leasehold and avoid eviction. The problem is that HUD Handbook rules governing succession rights in these situations don’t apply to buildings enrolled in the project-based Section 8 voucher program, like Ocean Bay. Instead, HUD leaves the PHA in charge of administering the project discretion to set its own succession rules. 

Not only did NYCHA establish succession rules in this case, it also had exclusive jurisdiction over PBV succession claims, including in the context of public housing conversions under the PACT program. Consequently, the court said it had no authority to decide on the daughter’s succession defense and issued an eviction. 

However, what the court could and did do was stay execution of the eviction order for four months to give the daughter what she never got from NYCHA—a fair chance to make out her succession defense. And if she could prove that NYCHA’s decision to award the voucher to the son unfairly stripped her of her succession rights, she’d be allowed to stay.    

• Ocean Bay RAD, LLC v. Camacho, 2025 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 8835, 2025 NY Slip Op 25244, 2025 LX 529161