Recent Court Rulings

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Facts: A resident sued her local PHA after she slipped and fell on exterior steps covered in snow and ice. The steps connected the plaza outside her building to a park area that leads to an adjacent public roadway. At trial, the PHA didn’t dispute that it had constructive notice of the allegedly hazardous condition of the steps, which were an intended means of access between the building plaza and the sidewalk by the roadway.

Facts: As a condition of occupancy at a privately owned, mixed-income residential development, residents are required to submit to annual drug testing. When five residents refused to submit to the drug test even though they had previously consented to drug testing, the owners began eviction proceedings for violating their leases.

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...

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 ...

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 pe...

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.