Williams v. Hanover Housing Authority

• Decision Date: 30 April 1996
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. 93-10964-WGY.
• Parties: Tashima WILLIAMS, Marsha Monterio Wanda Small and Mikhail Tsyrkin, Individually and on behalf of all persons similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. The HANOVER HOUSING AUTHORITY, and Kevin Donovan, in his official capacity as Director of the Hanover Housing Authority, and The Danvers Housing Authority, and Melody Kriteman, in her official capacity as Director of the Danvers Housing Authority and The Arlington Housing Authority, and Jeremiah Donovan, in his official capacity as Director of the Arlington Housing Authority and, Henry Cisneros, Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Mary Padula, Secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Communities and Development, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts

926 F. Supp. 10

Tashima WILLIAMS, Marsha Monterio Wanda Small and Mikhail Tsyrkin, Individually and on behalf of all persons similarly situated, Plaintiffs, v. The HANOVER HOUSING AUTHORITY, and Kevin Donovan, in his official capacity as Director of the Hanover Housing Authority, and The Danvers Housing Authority, and Melody Kriteman, in her official capacity as Director of the Danvers Housing Authority and The Arlington Housing Authority, and Jeremiah Donovan, in his official capacity as Director of the Arlington Housing Authority and, Henry Cisneros, Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Mary Padula, Secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Communities and Development, Defendants.

Civil Action No. 93-10964-WGY.

United States District Court, D. Massachusetts.

April 30, 1996.

Judith Liben, Boston, MA, Henry Korman, Cambridge, MA, for plaintiffs.

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

Bernard M. Ortwein, Boston, MA, for Arlington Housing Authority.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

YOUNG, District Judge.

Tashima Williams, Marsha Monterio, Mikhail Tsyrkin, and Wanda Small (collectively, the "Williams Plaintiffs") petition this Court to award them reasonable attorney's fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988.

I. BACKGROUND AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

The Williams Plaintiffs brought suit in this Court in April 1993 against the Arlington, Danvers, and Hanover Public Housing Authorities (collectively, the "Authorities") and Henry Cisneros, Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (the "Department"). Their suit claimed that the Authorities, with the permission of the Department, were restricting the Williams Plaintiffs in the use of their Section 8 subsidies¹ to the city or town in which the issuing authority was located. The Williams Plaintiffs contended that this limitation on the use of their subsidies violated 42 U.S.C. § 1437f(r)(1) and Department regulations promulgated thereunder, violated Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, deprived them of rights secured by federal law and the Constitution under color of state law in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and deprived them of their constitutional right to travel. The heart and specifics of the Williams Plaintiffs' complaint are laid bare in great detail in this Court's earlier Memorandum and Order for Certification in this case. Williams v. Hanover Housing Auth., 871 F.Supp. 527 (D.Mass. 1994). While such detail need not be repeated here, a brief summary is in order.

To expedite the resolution of the Williams Plaintiffs' claims, the parties agreed that the issues would be submitted for decision by this Court as a case stated. See Continental Grain Co. v. Puerto Rico Maritime Shipping Auth., 972 F.2d 426, 429 n. 7 (1st Cir.1992) (noting that the submission of a matter to the court as a case stated increases judicial efficiency); Boston Five Cents Savings Bank v. Department of Housing and Urban Dev., 768 F.2d 5, 12 (1st Cir.1985) (Breyer, C.J.) (same). The Court heard oral arguments from the parties on June 16, 1993 and thereafter issued its Memorandum and Order of Certification addressing the Williams Plaintiffs' claims.

The crux of the Williams Plaintiffs' complaint was that pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1437f and regulations promulgated thereunder, the Authorities are obligated to contract with landlords outside of their municipalities for the provision of low income housing where the failure to do so would result in the forfeiture of the subsidy by the beneficiary. The Authorities had been requiring recipients of the Section 8 subsidy who did not originally live within their political borders to use their subsidy within those borders for the first twelve months they received the subsidy in accordance with 42 U.S.C. § 1437f(r)(1), which states in relevant part:

any family not living within the jurisdiction of the 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) (West 1994) (emphasis supplied).² Section 1437f(r)(1) thus makes crucial the jurisdictional reach of the public housing agency. Nowhere, however, does federal statutory law dictate a jurisdictional definition for the public housing agencies. Instead, 24 C.F.R. § 882.103, a regulation promulgated by the Department to implement the Section 8 Housing Assistance Program, leaves it to the public housing agencies to determine their own jurisdictional reach by reference to state law when it states that public housing agencies may provide housing "in any area where the public housing agency determines that it is not legally barred from entering into Contracts." See 24 C.F.R. § 882.102 (1995).

The Authorities, operating in accordance with a legal opinion issued by the Massachusetts Office of Communities and Development (the "Agency"),³ had been interpreting state law as legally barring them, and all other Massachusetts public housing authorities, from contracting for the provision of housing outside of their own municipalities without an agreement to do so with another public housing authority. This created a situation in which the Williams Plaintiffs, or other similarly situated subsidy recipients, could be deprived of the use of the subsidy if suitable housing could not be located within the issuing Authority's municipality.

The Williams Plaintiffs offered three theories as grounds for redress. First, they argued that the Department's Section 8 rules and regulations, as well as its handbook guidelines, mandate that the Authorities define their jurisdiction as broadly as possible and that the only permissible limitation on the Authorities' jurisdiction are those explicitly enumerated in the Department's handbook. This Court rejected that argument and determined that the Department's regulations did not contain any mandate as to the jurisdictional reach of the Authorities, but rather left it to state and local law to determine the jurisdictional limits of the Authorities' power to contract for the provision of subsidized housing. In other words, the Authorities', or any other public housing agency's, jurisdiction is a matter of state, not federal, law.

Next, the Williams Plaintiffs argued that state law did not restrict the Authorities' jurisdiction to the confines of their political boundaries as the Agency had opined. In this regard, the Court agreed with the Williams Plaintiffs and held that, contrary to the opinion expressed by the Agency, "under the laws 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.'" Williams, 871 F.Supp. at 530-31 (emphasis supplied). Finally, the Williams Plaintiffs argued that the restriction placed upon their use of the Section 8 vouchers was a violation of their constitutional right to travel.

Having concluded that state law allowed the Authorities to contract for housing outside of their own municipal boundaries, this Court found it unnecessary to address the Williams Plaintiffs' constitutional claims. Moreover, this Court, realizing that an interpretation of state law was central to the resolution of this matter, certified the issue to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for further determination under the provisions of Sup.Jud.Ct.R. 1:03.

The Department accepted this Court's ruling as an authoritative declaration of state law and, in turn, required the Authorities to act accordingly and contract for housing beyond their political boundaries if necessary, which they promptly did. Thus, before this certified question was docketed with the Supreme Judicial Court, this action was dismissed as moot since further determination by the Supreme Judicial Court was unnecessary given the parties' compliance with this Court's interpretation of state law.

Their suit thus having come to an end, the Williams Plaintiffs seek to have the Arlington and Danvers Housing Authorities pay their attorney's fees under the provisions of 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b).⁴

II. ANALYSIS

For this Court to exercise its discretion and award a reasonable attorney's fee to the Williams Plaintiffs, they must be prevailing parties in "any action or proceeding to enforce a provision of 42 U.S.C. sections 1981, 1981a, 1982, 1983, 1985 or 1986." 42 U.S.C.A. § 1988(b) (West 1994). Here, the Williams Plaintiffs claimed, inter alia, they had been deprived of "rights secured by federal statutes, regulations and the United States Constitution ... in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983." Plaintiffs' Complaint at ¶ 69. Now the Williams Plaintiffs claim they have prevailed in their § 1983 action and are therefore entitled to attorney's fees under § 1988(b).

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