Federally funded legal services programs regularly become tangled in lawsuits
involving low-income housing, both public and privately owned.
Unfortunately, in many instances, legal services takes positions in these cases
that inhibit development of low income housing and prevent landlords and public
housing agencies from managing their property efficiently and in the best
interests of the low-income tenants.
Legal Services Attempts to Bog Baltimore Housing Agency Down in Bogus Hearing Requirements
The Legal Aid Bureau of Maryland, a recipient of federal taxpayer dollars, failed in its attempt to require the Housing Authority of Baltimore City (HABC) to continue providing extensive pre-eviction administrative hearings to public housing tenants accused of violating the terms of their leases. Although these hearings had, at one time, been required by federal law, by 1990 changes in federal housing laws meant that these expensive and time-consuming hearings were no longer necessary. In 1995 HABC responded to this change in law by removing the right to an administrative hearing for tenants being evicted due to endangering the health or safety of employees and other residents, or for drug-related offenses. Subsequently, HABC asked a federal court to set aside a 1984 consent decree, resulting from previous litigation with Legal Aid, that required HABC to provide pre-eviction hearings under the prior federal law. The Legal Aid Bureau argued in opposition that HABC was still required to provide these hearings, even though the federal law that led to the consent decree had been changed in the interim. Both the federal district court and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed with Legal Aid and overturned the consent decree. This case illustrates how legal services groups will fight for procedural tricks that allow them to fight welfare and public housing reform.
See Gilmore v. Housing Authority of Baltimore City, 1999 U.S.
App. LEXIS 3747 (4th Cir. Mar. 10, 1999).
Neighborhood Legal Services of Pittsburgh Sues Repeatedly to Allow Endless Appeals For Tenants
Without a real need to consider litigation costs in individual cases, legal services providers often use taxpayer dollars to pursue appeals of unfavorable decisions that can drag on for years, often winning in the end more by exhausting the financial resources of their opponents than by winning in the courtroom. Not surprisingly, legal services providers will often fight doggedly to preserve the right to these seemingly endless appeals. A recent example can be found in Pennsylvania, where Neighborhood Legal Services of Pittsburgh (NLS), which receives taxpayer dollars from the Legal Services Corporation, has filed two lawsuits arguing that low-income tenants not be required to post a bond with the court if they wish to appeal an eviction judgement against them, even though all other tenants in that situation are required to post such a bond. The bonds, held by the court during the appeal, are designed to ensure that landlords who have won the right to evict their tenants will receive due rent from those tenants while the eviction is on hold pending appeal. NLS, however, argued in state court that Pennsylvania's bond requirement discriminated against the rights of poorer tenants, who may not be able to afford the bond. After losing in state court, NLS filed a similar suit in federal court in March, 1999. An NLS attorney admitted that "[t]he Supreme Court blew us out of the water, so what's left to try is the federal court route."
See Timothy McNulty and Eleanor Chute, "Judge Halts Eviction In
Rent-Subsidy Dispute; Federal Court Hearing Ordered In Sharpsburg Case,"
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 17, 1999; Michael E. Sacks, "High Court
Hands Landlords Major Victory," Pennsylvania Law Weekly,
February 8, 1999.
Legal Services Groups File Brief Supporting Destruction of Landlords' Property Rights
Several legal services programs, including the federally funded San Fernando Valley Neighborhood Legal Services and Legal Services for New York City, filed 'friend of the court' briefs in a federal court case supporting the right of Congress to pass laws preventing private owners of low-income apartments from buying out their Department of Housing and Urban Development-insured mortgages and converting the properties to more upscale use. The landowners had contracted for the HUD-insured mortgages since the 1950's with the provision that they could prepay the loan in full after twenty years and no longer be obligated to maintain the property as low-income housing. In 1990, however, Congress passed legislation placing a moratorium on landowners exercising this existing prepayment option. In 1995, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims held that the law violated the contract rights of the landowners. With the help of the briefs from legal services, however, U.S. Department of Justice attorneys were able to convince the Court of Appeals to overturn the lower court's decision and rule that Congress could take away the property owners' rights.
See Cienega Gardens v. United States, 1998 U.S. App. LEXIS 30991
(Fed Cir., Dec. 7, 1998).