Housing authority looks to settle Hendrix Section 8 case

Tables turn on due process

BY CYDNEY GILLIS, Staff Reporter

Tina Hendrix went to court last year to stop the Seattle Housing Authority from taking away her housing assistance. Promising to improve its hearing process, SHA wants to settle. Photo by Sherry Loeser

It’s still up in the air whether Hendrix, a Rainier Valley resident and niece of rock legend Jimi Hendrix, will ultimately get to keep her own federal Section 8 voucher, which pays a landlord most of a low-income tenant’s rent. But in a Feb. 25 letter to her attorney, the housing authority’s deputy director, Andrew Lofton, proposes a number of changes to the SHA termination hearing process that led to the lawsuit, including hiring three to five new hearing officers with legal backgrounds and training them in the voucher program’s rules.

The “proposed procedures accomplish what I believe we are both seeking, a fair hearing,” Lofton writes.

It’s a good start, says attorney Eric Dunn of the Northwest Justice Project, but “what they’re proposing to do doesn’t go nearly far enough.”

Dunn filed the case for Hendrix in U.S. District Court last April after she received a termination notice in which the housing authority said, in part, that she had failed to inform it that her teenage daughter had run away and she’d taken in a nephew [“SHA’s weird ways fuel protest,” June 20-26]. Hendrix says she did tell the agency and sued to stop SHA from conducting any termination hearings, with Dunn arguing that the informal hearings — which are meant to give tenants a chance to challenge SHA’s termination decision — are essentially shams that fail to meet U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development regulations and constitutional standards of due process.

Dunn says that the poor are deprived of housing for trivial paperwork errors and that SHA’s lone hearing examiner, Lawrence Weldon, who is not a lawyer, routinely rubber stamps the agency’s decision without regard for tenant evidence or arguments involving the law, disabilities or other factors. The Northwest Justice Project and the Tenants Union researched a number of Section 8 terminations last year for a report the groups provided to the housing authority.

The housing authority maintains that its termination hearings meet HUD standards. But, last September, a judge stopped the agency from holding Hendrix’s termination hearing — allowing others to continue — until the issue could be resolved at trial, which is set for July. On Feb. 20, however, Dunn filed a motion asking the court to rule in Hendrix’s favor without a trial, based in part on a statement of facts that both parties signed in January.

In the document, the Seattle Housing Authority’s top attorney, James Fearn, acknowledges that the agency’s “hearing officers are precluded from overturning [SHA] termination decisions based upon arguments” that involve “rights under any law forbidding discrimination,” fairnessdoctrines, mitigating factors, or even a violation of state or city law.

Dunn calls it breathtaking that the general counsel of a major housing authority would admit to not allowing legal arguments in a due process hearing. He says the pressure to settle the case is likely external, from HUD officials he contacted last fall. “They basically were in agreement with our position and told me they wanted SHA to settle,” he says.

As for reaching an agreement, there are still a lot of details to be ironed out, he says. Among them, Dunn wants the
The poor are deprived of housing for trivial paperwork errors and that SHA’s lone hearing examiner, Lawrence Weldon, who is not a lawyer, routinely rubber stamps the agency’s decision without regard for tenant evidence or arguments, contends Eric Dunn, lawyer for Tina Hendrix.housing authority to stipulate what kind of legal education the new hearing officers will have and give them comprehensive training on applicable housing law and policies. The agency has offered to create a hearing officer selection panel that would include one member of the Tenants Union, but Dunn says that’s not enough — the panel needs other community representatives
or housing lawyers.

In the Feb. 25 settlement offer, Lofton notes that the housing authority has recently instituted a “conferencing option” in which tenants who have received a termination notice can meet with SHA staff to determine what information they can provide to save their rent voucher. SHA is “very excited about the results,” Lofton writes: In January, 40 of 41 termination cases were resolved without the need for a hearing.

Dunn says that just proves how many unjustified Section 8 terminations there were in the past — people he would like to see reinstated. But, “SHA has expressed that they’re not willing to do anything about the hundreds of people they’ve kicked out of the program without due process,” he says.

“We haven’t come to grips with whether we’re going to accept that or not,” Dunn adds. “It’s a pretty incredible tragedy.”