HUD & Retaliatory Conduct

[LeXorre]

Over the years, I have come to realize that retaliatory conduct is more or less a form of self-expression for slumlords, in general. More to the point, I have been forced to accept that HUD is by far the Nation's biggest slumlord and therefore specializes in retaliatory conduct like no other slumlord.

When I first moved to Jacksonville, Florida in April, 2002 to help some relatives of mine who were in poor health at my grandmother's request, I was assigned a studio unit that turned out to be infested with termites. When it got bad enough by Spring, 2004 that the apartment became uninhabitable, I went to the BBB and was able to arrange a transfer to a 1 BR apartment at a discount for the first year. As it happened, I was being issued a Section 8 voucher at the time, so I had hopes of using it at the 1 BR unit, since the landlord accepted vouchers. Unknown to me at the time, though, was that my landlord had decided to retaliate against me for reporting the termite problem to HUD by not allowing me to use my voucher there. The property manager told me that the studio really had become uninhabitable and that I needed to vacate as soon as possible (i.e., before I received my voucher), but gave no assurance that I would be able to use the voucher at the new unit, simply saying that she would try.

The excuse that the Jacksonville Housing Authority and my landlord wound up giving for not allowing me to use my voucher at the property wound up being that the exteriors of all of the buildings needed to be repainted, so that no more vouchers would be accepted there until it was done, and that all of the tenants using vouchers there would have to either give them up or find someplace else to use them within the next year. I never believed it (the JaxHA never did put it in writing, just failed the unit after inspection and then issued a replacement voucher without giving me a chance to have the 1 BR apartment re-inspected), so I sought the assistance of Jacksonville Area Legal Aid, along with anyone at HUD who would listen -- including the HUD Office of Inspector General & HUD Fair Housing.

Ultimately, I wound up having to re-apply, and that is what I did on 11/07/2006. HUD's first chance to retaliate against me for reporting its complicity with my old landlord came a couple of years later, when I phoned the JaxHA on 10/30/2008 to check on the status of the application. The Applications Clerk told me that they were just getting to the applications from late October, 2006, meaning that I should be selected off the waiting list at any time. But when I called in a couple of months later, he told me that there had been no change and to just keep my contact info up to date. It wasn't until I called in again on 2/7/2009 that a JaxHA Intake Clerk finally told me that I had been mistakenly passed over to be taken off the waiting list. The Intake Clerk also told me that she would talk to the Applications Clerk about adding me to a list of applicants due to be processed on 2/11/2009. But a short time later, the Applications Clerk told me that this would not be possible and freely admitted to being behind the error that had caused my "preferences" (i.e., my disability information) to be entered incorrectly, so that I was passed over in error.

Both Clerks were let go of (or more likely transferred) shortly afterward, as I reported the incident to anyone at HUD that I could, and ultimately started to report HUD's conduct to Donna Murphy, Director of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. Both Clerks' replacements seemed highly professional, and one of them turned out to be my Case Worker, once I was finally issued another voucher on 6/16/2011. It turned out that the property I wound up using my voucher with contacted JaxHA Inspections illegally after I returned it to be processed on 6/22/2011, so that the new unit passed inspection only 3 business days later on 6/27/2011 (the process normally takes 2 to 3 weeks). This was an attempt by my current landlord to defraud HUD by getting me to use my voucher a full month before my existing lease had expired (voucher recipients are not allowed to have more than one residence). I reported the matter to the JaxHA, giving them a chance to request a revision of the fraudulent lease, which my property manager was livid over.

But rather than punish either my landlord or the JaxHA Representative who had helped my landlord to break the rules, the JaxHA did nothing while my landlord retaliated against me by relentlessly harassing me for 7 months straight -- starting during my very first week in my current apartment -- through a downstairs tenant (who just happened to be an employee), so that I was forced to go to the BBB once again for help. Worst of all, my Case Worker told me when I picked up my replacement voucher on 6/14/2012 (my landlord has, of course, declined to renew my lease) that he would not request an inspection in connection with my new unit until 7/1/2012 -- regardless of when I returned it to be processed -- illegally cutting into the 60 days to which I am entitled as a disabled individual for finding a new apartment to use the voucher at, in a blatant attempt to force me out of the Section 8 program once and for all.

I have exhausted all remedies within proper channels for seeking redress for HUD's conduct, and it is clear that they are never going to stop retaliating against me for reporting their complicity with my old landlord's own retaliatory conduct in 2004, so I have no choice now but to find a way to file suit against HUD -- which, of course, HUD is assuming I cannot do. Is HUD correct in this assumption?

[AFFA]

I wish to inform you that if you are unable to resolve your dispute then Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provides a Federal Dispute Resolution Program. Further if you are unable to resolve dispute then you will have to seek directions from court. You can seek your rights through court if other methods of dispute resolution are ineffective or justice cannot be received.

AFF

[LeXorre]

I am sure the Federal Dispute Resolution Program would be no more useful in addressing HUD's retaliatory conduct than Legal Aid (it's also affiliated with HUD) has been. Any suggestions regarding Legal Entities that might be willing to take action against HUD on behalf of a tenant?

[LeXorre]

I gather that no one cares about this issue, but it is a real problem when the Federal Government is a landlord -- and in particular when its tenants are primarily among the Nation's most disenfranchised (i.e., low-income minorities) -- given that Civil Suits can't be filed against Federal Agencies and that this is the only recourse tenants generally have against retaliatory conduct by landlords. I have long believed that HUD needs to be disbanded, with its Properties being privatized and its Programs allocated to better-funded Federal Agencies, and I see now that the failure of the Nation (i.e., the Department of Justice) to bring this about can only serve to create a situation where the Federal Government itself actively and willfully participates in reinforcing the disenfranchisement of low-income minorities.

[Friend In Court]

If HUD is disbanded you and tens of thousands of others will end up with no place to live. The Section 8 subsidy program is the only way that tens of thousands of people have a place to call home. With income unable to meet market rents, parks and under bridges is the other practical option.

My suggestion is that you give the benefit of the doubt to HUD rather than take your caseworkers and the agency head on. And Legal Aid is NOT affiliated with HUD for they are a separate agency. Legal Aid has taken on government agencies at all levels -- in behalf of a client they believed was wronged and others similarly so. So drop the chip on your shoulder and quit seeing conspiracies everywhere is my advice.

As to the "excuse" about not being allowed to use your voucher at the Jacksonville apartment house for its deferred maintenance, that is proper under the standard that HUD uses for ALL properties. Single family houses have been rejected for Section 8 for the same reason -- cracked paint, poorly maintained windows that allowed air and weather in. When one rents a house under Section 8, HUD inspects to make sure the place is well maintained -- for the tenant's safety and security. Be grateful for that. There is a long, long waiting list for people who qualify for assistance meeting their housing needs -- some wait two years or more and in many counties the agency is not open to even taking applications to get on the wait list.

As to the landlord, you may take legal action against him for his retaliation and that is where I would focus my energy if I were you when you next contact Legal Aid. One would think that your bridge with HUD is not one you want to burn.

[LeXorre]

When I first contacted Jacksonville Area Legal Aid for assistance back in 2004, they told me that they received funding through HUD. If you would like to check yourself, their address is jaxlegalaid.org. HUD itself has always hated being assigned the Section 8 Program and its own Commissioner indicated some years ago that he wanted the Program to be eliminated altogether. Also, it is difficult to conceive of HUD doing anything at all that could not be handled better by either the private industry or more well funded municipal, State & Federal Agencies – if only because HUD itself is so poorly funded, as an Agency which primarily serves low-income minorities.

With regards to my seeing conspiracies everywhere, I would surely love to hear you come up with a legitimate reason for my JaxHA Case Worker to punish me for reporting fraudulent conduct on the part of my landlord, claiming that it was necessary to prevent another landlord from engaging in similar conduct, without actually punishing my landlord at all and after having spent months telling me that my landlord's relentless harassment of me for reporting the misconduct was strictly a landlord-tenant issue. Also, I know for a fact that the exteriors of the buildings at my original Property were never painted and that those using Section 8 vouchers there were never forced to give them up, because I resided at the Property for another 3 years after the incident and continued to check whenever I got the chance for years after I left. As for having a chip on my shoulder, I wonder how you yourself would feel if HUD's conduct had prevented you from helping close family members that you came halfway across the country to help and who subsequently died.

And you never did address the fact that a Federal Agency serving as a landlord constitutes an automatic violation of the Civil Rights of the Agency's tenants – since they are automatically deprived of the right to sue their landlord for retaliatory conduct – or the fact that it serves to reinforce the disenfranchisement of low-income minorities when the tenants of the Federal Agency serving as landlord are primarily low-income minorities. Is that because you consider these issues it to be unimportant? Because I can tell you from long personal experience that these issues are of extreme importance to the predominately minority local Representatives of HUD, who take tremendous pride in understanding that the true purpose of the Civil Rights movement was to afford minorities the opportunity to actively participate in and reinforce the disenfranchisement of low-income minorities at every possible opportunity – after all, if they are doing it in the service of the Federal Government, what reason is there to think it is anything but perfectly justified?

[Friend In Court]

If it were not for HUD financed and owned properties literally hundreds of thousands of people would be without housing at all.

I will not take on each point you have raised for the length would equal a legal treatise. Hundreds of thousands of people have benefited by H.U.D. insured and HUD finances properties. After the War the middle class was born through H.U.D. making home ownership possible for people that would not have been otherwise -- people the banks would have required more for downpayment than they had.

Presently people whose income will not support market rents, who would be sleeping in night shelters, on the street, or under bridges are able to live in decent, up to code, well maintained apartments or houses -- most homes of their own choosing under the Section 8 program.

There is a simple solution for one who has such dislike of the H.U.D. program and every one in it and that is to drop out of it. Pick your own house or apartment, pick your own landlord, pay your own rent, and that way you will nothing to bellyache and gripe about -- to the people, the taxpayers who are paying your rent for you!

My last comment is I know that Legal Services is not primarily financed by H.U.D. but other sources. If one does not like or trust Legal Aid the solution there is simple, too. Hire one's own private lawyer.

[LeXorre]

Using Legal Aid is most certainly a last resort in this situation, and I am diligently searching for a private attorney willing to file suit against HUD over developments from 2004. I am also seriously considering forgoing the Section 8 voucher altogether, having such stark confirmation now of what a criminal Agency HUD is. But the truth of the matter is that the only reason I have dealt with HUD for as long as I have is in the hope that I might be able seek redress over what took place in 2004 for the sake of what HUD's conduct has cost my family.

I suppose you are looking for me to allow -- as so many in the US seem to want to believe -- that the good HUD does outweighs the harm caused by the fact that it is basically illegal for Federal Agencies to serve as landlords, since Landlord-Tenant Law is simply not applicable in such a circumstance, so that it constitutes an automatic violation of the most basic Civil Rights of their tenants. If not for the fact that HUD's tenants are primarily low-income minorities and that HUD's local Representatives are primarily minorities, I suppose I might very well have to do so. But, on the whole, this Nation's oppression of low-income minorities represents the greatest evil this planet has ever seen, and HUD represents the fact that what the Civil Rights movement has achieved is to get minorities to agree that it actually represents the ultimate good -- which folk of African-Descent have done in this Nation with all their hearts. I honestly believe that this is absolutely the worst possible outcome of the oppression of low-income minorities in this Nation and that the corruption which must inevitably be bred by the criminality of a Federal Agency -- whose local Representatives are predominately minorities -- serving as a landlord to low-income minorities plays a huge role in it.

Or perhaps we should all finally admit that the true purpose of the Civil Rights movement was not to make certain that all Citizens were afforded their full rights under the Constitution, but rather to reinforce the disenfranchisement of low-income minorities by increasing the opportunities for minorities to actively participate in it. Doing so would eliminate a great deal of confusion, so that you wouldn’t have someone like me coming here to point out that it is criminal for Federal Agencies to serve as landlords, since it is really only true if the purpose of the Civil Rights movement was to ensure that all minorities are afforded their full rights under the Constitution, so that they are not Citizens on paper only -- and no minority Citizens of this Nation take as much pride in their belief that this is exactly as it should be as do HUD's minority local Representatives.

[LeXorre]

By way of reiteration, no Federal Agency can be sued without a waiver of its Sovereign Immunity or the equivalent. The Housing Authorities are supposed to serve as an effective waiver of HUD's Sovereign Immunity, just by being County/Municipal Agencies receiving funding through HUD and therefore subject to being sued by the Legal Aid entities of these Municipalities -- on paper, at least. In reality, these Legal Aid entities (which very often similarly receive funding through HUD, as is the case in my City) are not under any circumstances going to sue a landlord (or a Housing Authority, by extension) on behalf of a tenant; at best, they will defend a tenant against being sued for eviction. This means that the only effective legal recourse tenants have against landlords (and the Housing Authorities, by extension) through Legal Aid is to defend against being sued by them, so that the Housing Authorities do not serve as a waiver of HUD's Sovereign Immunity. This means that it is unconstitutional for HUD to own all of the properties that it does throughout the Nation, as it constitutes an automatic violation of its tenants' Civil Rights in the absence of an effective waiver of HUD's Sovereign Immunity. So long as Housing Authorities exist, they serve only one purpose: to perpetuate the illusion of a waiver of HUD's Sovereign Immunity, thereby reinforcing the disenfranchisement of low-income minorities.

For those of you who want to know why there is so much crime in these HUD developments throughout the Nation, here is your answer. Without an effective waiver of HUD's Sovereign Immunity in place, HUD properties (and, to a lesser extent, those subsidized through HUD) have more in common with prisons than they do with conventional rental properties. After all, why obey the laws of this or any other nation if you have no opportunity to ever become anything more than a citizen on paper only? The only solution, of course, is for HUD's properties to be privatized.

Originally Posted by LeXorre Over the years, I have come to realize that retaliatory conduct is more or less a form of self-expression for slumlords, in general. More to the point, I have been forced to accept that HUD is by far the Nation's biggest slumlord and therefore specializes in retaliatory conduct like no other slumlord. When I first moved to Jacksonville, Florida in April, 2002 to help some relatives of mine who were in poor health at my grandmother's request, I was assigned a studio unit that turned out to be infested with termites. When it got bad enough by Spring, 2004 that the apartment became uninhabitable, I went to the BBB and was able to arrange a transfer to a 1 BR apartment at a discount for the first year. As it happened, I was being issued a Section 8 voucher at the time, so I had hopes of using it at the 1 BR unit, since the landlord accepted vouchers. Unknown to me at the time, though, was that my landlord had decided to retaliate against me for reporting the termite problem to HUD by not allowing me to use my voucher there. The property manager told me that the studio really had become uninhabitable and that I needed to vacate as soon as possible (i.e., before I received my voucher), but gave no assurance that I would be able to use the voucher at the new unit, simply saying that she would try. The excuse that the Jacksonville Housing Authority and my landlord wound up giving for not allowing me to use my voucher at the property wound up being that the exteriors of all of the buildings needed to be repainted, so that no more vouchers would be accepted there until it was done, and that all of the tenants using vouchers there would have to either give them up or find someplace else to use them within the next year. I never believed it (the JaxHA never did put it in writing, just failed the unit after inspection and then issued a replacement voucher without giving me a chance to have the 1 BR apartment re-inspected), so I sought the assistance of Jacksonville Area Legal Aid, along with anyone at HUD who would listen -- including the HUD Office of Inspector General & HUD Fair Housing. Ultimately, I wound up having to re-apply, and that is what I did on 11/07/2006. HUD's first chance to retaliate against me for reporting its complicity with my old landlord came a couple of years later, when I phoned the JaxHA on 10/30/2008 to check on the status of the application. The Applications Clerk told me that they were just getting to the applications from late October, 2006, meaning that I should be selected off the waiting list at any time. But when I called in a couple of months later, he told me that there had been no change and to just keep my contact info up to date. It wasn't until I called in again on 2/7/2009 that a JaxHA Intake Clerk finally told me that I had been mistakenly passed over to be taken off the waiting list. The Intake Clerk also told me that she would talk to the Applications Clerk about adding me to a list of applicants due to be processed on 2/11/2009. But a short time later, the Applications Clerk told me that this would not be possible and freely admitted to being behind the error that had caused my "preferences" (i.e., my disability information) to be entered incorrectly, so that I was passed over in error. Both Clerks were let go of (or more likely transferred) shortly afterward, as I reported the incident to anyone at HUD that I could, and ultimately started to report HUD's conduct to Donna Murphy, Director of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. Both Clerks' replacements seemed highly professional, and one of them turned out to be my Case Worker, once I was finally issued another voucher on 6/16/2011. It turned out that the property I wound up using my voucher with contacted JaxHA Inspections illegally after I returned it to be processed on 6/22/2011, so that the new unit passed inspection only 3 business days later on 6/27/2011 (the process normally takes 2 to 3 weeks). This was an attempt by my current landlord to defraud HUD by getting me to use my voucher a full month before my existing lease had expired (voucher recipients are not allowed to have more than one residence). I reported the matter to the JaxHA, giving them a chance to request a revision of the fraudulent lease, which my property manager was livid over. But rather than punish either my landlord or the JaxHA Representative who had helped my landlord to break the rules, the JaxHA did nothing while my landlord retaliated against me by relentlessly harassing me for 7 months straight -- starting during my very first week in my current apartment -- through a downstairs tenant (who just happened to be an employee), so that I was forced to go to the BBB once again for help. Worst of all, my Case Worker told me when I picked up my replacement voucher on 6/14/2012 (my landlord has, of course, declined to renew my lease) that he would not request an inspection in connection with my new unit until 7/1/2012 -- regardless of when I returned it to be processed -- illegally cutting into the 60 days to which I am entitled as a disabled individual for finding a new apartment to use the voucher at, in a blatant attempt to force me out of the Section 8 program once and for all. I have exhausted all remedies within proper channels for seeking redress for HUD's conduct, and it is clear that they are never going to stop retaliating against me for reporting their complicity with my old landlord's own retaliatory conduct in 2004, so I have no choice now but to find a way to file suit against HUD -- which, of course, HUD is assuming I cannot do. Is HUD correct in this assumption?

Yeah I feel ya I been seeing the same sickening thing here in washington state HUD has done nothing against a housing authority for defrauding me out of the utility allowance denying me a fair hearing yeah HUD needs to be dismantled for the good of all.