Williams v. Hanover Housing Authority

• Decision Date: 12 December 1994
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 93-10964-WGY.
• Citation: 871 F. Supp. 527
• Parties: Tashima WILLIAMS, Marsha Monterio, Mikhail Tsyrkin, and Wanda Small, Plaintiffs, v. HANOVER HOUSING AUTHORITY, Danvers Housing Authority, Arlington Housing Authority, and Henry Cisneros, in his capacity as Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts

871 F. Supp. 527

Tashima WILLIAMS, Marsha Monterio, Mikhail Tsyrkin, and Wanda Small, Plaintiffs, v. HANOVER HOUSING AUTHORITY, Danvers Housing Authority, Arlington Housing Authority, and Henry Cisneros, in his capacity as Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 93-10964-WGY.

United States District Court, D. Massachusetts.

December 12, 1994.

Judith Liben, Boston, MA, Henry Korman, Mass. Law Reform Inst., Boston, MA, for plaintiffs Tashima Williams, Marsha Monterio, Wanda Small, and Mikhail Tsyrkin.

Marsha Donovan, Danvers, MA, for defendant Danvers Housing Authority.

Judith S. Yogman, Atty. Gen. Office, Boston, MA, for movant Executive Office of Communities and Development.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER FOR CERTIFICATION

YOUNG, District Judge.

This case concerns the portability of Section 8 housing vouchers ("Section 8 vouchers" or "Section 8 subsidies") provided by the Department of Housing & Urban Development ("HUD") under the United States Housing Act of 1937, 42 U.S.C.A. § 1437 et seq. (1978 & Supp.1993).¹ Specifically, the questions before this Court are (a) whether the Housing Act and its implementing regulations and guidelines require Massachusetts public housing authorities to contract with landlords outside their municipal boundaries where a failure to do so would result in forfeiture of a subsidy by the beneficiary, and in the alternative, (b) whether Massachusetts law and the federal Housing and Community Development Act of 1992, Pub.L. 102-550, § 147, 106 Stat. 3715 prohibit local housing authorities from contracting with landlords outside of the community in which they are located.

The controversy arises from a 1992 amendment to the Section 8 portability rules which limit a participant to housing located "within the jurisdiction" of the public housing authority issuing the subsidy for the first twelve months of the Section 8 tenancy. The law, as amended, states in pertinent part:

any family not living within the jurisdiction of a public housing agency at the time that such family applies for assistance from such agency shall, during the 12-month period beginning upon the receipt of any tenant based rental assistance made available on behalf of the family, use such assistance to rent an eligible dwelling unit located within the jurisdiction served by such public housing agency.

42 U.S.C.A. § 1437f(r)(1) (Supp.1993) (emphasis added).

Tashima Williams, Marsha Monterio, Mikhail Tsyrkin, and Wanda Small (collectively, the "Williams plaintiffs") are each the head of household of a low-income family. Each of the Williams plaintiffs — all of whom previously lived in homeless shelters or other substandard housing — applied for and received Section 8 subsidies from various local public housing authorities in Massachusetts (collectively, the "authorities" or the "housing authorities"). Because each housing authority in this action has interpreted the law of Massachusetts defining its "jurisdiction" as the municipality in which it is located, each authority told one of the Section 8 plaintiffs that he or she was required to use the Section 8 assistance to rent housing within its municipal boundaries for the first twelve months of the Section 8 tenancy. The defendant Henry Cisneros, Secretary of HUD (the "Secretary"), approved the position taken by the defendant authorities. All four families were unable to find housing within the municipality of the authority which issued the assistance and thus risked forfeiting the subsidy.² The Williams plaintiffs thus brought suit in this Court to restrain the housing authorities and HUD from rescinding the subsidies by tolling or freezing the subsidies' expiration dates.

Although this Court concludes that the Massachusetts authorities are neither required to nor prohibited from contracting with landlords outside their municipal boundaries, the Court certifies its interpretation of Massachusetts law to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (the "SJC") pursuant to Rule 1:03 of that court. This memorandum sets forth this Court's reasoning.

I. BACKGROUND

In order to further its goal of helping to provide decent, safe and sanitary housing for low-income citizens, Congress authorized HUD to administer Section 8 of the United States Housing Act. See 42 U.S.C.A. § 1437 et seq. To that end, HUD promulgated rules and regulations to govern the Section 8 programs and published handbooks and notices to guide its employees and local public housing authorities. See 24 C.F.R. Parts 882, 887 (1994); see also Department of Housing and Urban Development, Public Housing Agency Administrative Practices Handbook for the Section 8 Existing Housing Program, Handbook 7420.7 (1979) (attached to the Agreed Statement of Facts at Ex. 7) (hereinafter Handbook).

Congress also recognized the importance of local decision-making in housing, however, and allowed local public housing authorities to exercise a great deal of power and responsibility. See 42 U.S.C.A. § 1437 (Supp.1993); Baker v. Cincinnati Metro. Hous. Auth., 675 F.2d 836, 839 (6th Cir.1982) (administrative housing scheme contemplates a large degree of local discretion and autonomy); Vandermark v. Hous. Auth. of York, 663 F.2d 436, 439 (3d Cir.1981) (same). In keeping with this administrative scheme, HUD relies on each local housing authority to determine its own area of jurisdiction and only loosely defines its jurisdiction as "any area where the authority determines that it is not legally barred" from administering HUD programs. 24 C.F.R. § 882.103 (1994). A housing authority's jurisdiction for Section 8 purposes, then, is the area where the authority ascertains it is "not legally barred" from contracting with private landlords to provide housing to a program participant.

In 1977, HUD was faced with conflicting legal opinions from two different Massachusetts housing authorities as to whether the authorities could legally contract with Section 8 landlords outside their municipal boundaries. Agreed Statement of Facts at ¶ 33 and Ex. 10-11. Pursuant to its own handbook, which states that a narrow definition of jurisdiction will be challenged, HUD asked the Massachusetts Executive Office of Communities and Development (the "Agency") — the state agency which oversees state and federal housing programs and supervises local public housing authorities — to seek a legal opinion from the Massachusetts Attorney General to resolve the dispute. Instead, the agency offered its own legal opinion (the "Agency Opinion") that a Massachusetts public housing authority could not contract with landlords outside its own municipality or community, except by agreement with another public housing authority. Agreed Statement of Facts at ¶ 34 and Ex. 12. HUD accepted the Agency Opinion as dispositive. Agreed Statement of Facts at ¶ 35 and Ex. 8. HUD continued to rely on it as such until this Court ruled to the contrary in the present case. Thus, in light of the Agency Opinion, a Section 8 recipient in Massachusetts could live outside the municipal boundaries of the public housing authority issuing the subsidy only where that authority had an agreement with the public housing authority within whose municipal boundaries the housing was to be found.

In 1992, Congress amended the portability rules of the Section 8 program, making the boundaries of a housing authority's jurisdiction much more significant and potentially damaging to the Section 8 applicant. Without altering or affecting HUD's definition of a public housing authority's jurisdiction as the area where the authority is not legally barred from contracting, the amendment limits the Section 8 participant who lives outside that jurisdiction but receives a subsidy from that authority to housing located within that public housing authority's jurisdiction for the first twelve months of the assistance. 42 U.S.C.A. § 1437f(r)(1) (Supp.1993). After that initial period, the participant can live in other areas of the state in accordance with the Section 8 mobility rules. Id.

The Williams plaintiffs brought this suit alleging that the regulations as interpreted by HUD deny them the equal protection of the laws and that the housing authorities wrongly interpreted their own regulations as well as Massachusetts state law. All parties in this case have agreed to an expedited resolution of the case upon a record constituting a case stated. See Continental Grain Co. v. Puerto Rico Maritime Shipping Auth., 972 F.2d 426, 429 n. 7 (1st Cir.1992); Boston Five Cents Sav. Bank v. Secretary of the Dep't of Hous. and Urban Dev., 768 F.2d 5, 11-12 (1st Cir.1985).

Counsel argued the merits of the case on June 16, 1993. Thereafter, without reaching the equal protection issue, this Court ruled, contrary to the interpretation adopted by the defendant authorities, that under the law of Massachusetts a local public housing authority is not legally barred from contracting with landlords owning dwellings outside its political boundaries for Section 8 purposes and that the resulting contracts are "within its jurisdiction." This determination satisfied HUD as an authoritative declaration of state law and bound the Massachusetts housing authorities (who promptly complied, thus solving the problem of these individual plaintiffs as framed by this complaint). As the interpretation of state law is central to the resolution of this case and presents larger public policy issues, this Court nevertheless certifies this issue to the SJC for further guidance.

II. ANALYSIS

This Court first addresses the Williams plaintiffs' contention that the Massachusetts housing authorities must define their jurisdiction as broadly as possible and thus are required to contract with landlords outside their municipal boundaries where necessary to achieve the purpose of Section 8. In consideration of this argument, the Court looks to Section 8 and HUD regulations to determine the correct...