Marie Townes and her three daughters lost their three-bedroom apartment and started living in motels less than a year after they moved from Renton to Seattle, in 2005.
The reason: Seattle Housing Authority canceled a rental voucher that paid two-thirds of the family's rent.
Townes is now demanding SHA reinstate her rental voucher in a class-action lawsuit that could have far-reaching consequences for the housing authority and 1,900 people awaiting an SHA rental voucher.
At issue is what constitutes due process and evidence in some 500 internal grievance hearings that SHA conducted from 2003 to 2008 prior to terminating people from its Section 8 voucher program.
In a 2008 settlement involving Tina Hendrix, niece of Jimi, SHA agreed to make changes to its hearing process, including hiring attorneys to serve as hearing officers and considering tenants' arguments. ("Housing authority looks to settle Hendrix Section 8 case," RC June 20, 2007).
Columbia Legal Services filed the case for Townes and another plaintiff, Markeletta Wilson, in 2009 and is now preparing for trial in October. The lawsuit seeks to reinstate Townes and Wilson, and force new hearings for more than 500 other people whom SHA has cut from the rental voucher program since 2003.
This means people who have waited years for help paying the rent could be forced to wait even longer, SHA spokesperson Virginia Felton said.
"Any vouchers we issue to people not on the waiting list makes the wait for those on it even longer," she said.
If the hearings were to restore vouchers to any of the 500 people denied them, it would be one less voucher for someone on the waiting list. The low-income housing agency had to close the waiting list in 2008 and doesn't expect to open it again until 2012, Felton said.
Columbia Legal Services attorneys Nick Straley and Merf Ehman say addressing the rights of those who have been wrongfully terminated or denied under the voucher system will ultimately benefit all who seek to participate in the program.
SHA has routinely deprived program participants of their rights and discriminated against the disabled in hearings, Straley and Ehman said.
SHA terminated Townes's voucher in 2006 after demanding that she prove she had legal custody of her baby daughter, Malayshaa. Straley and Ehman argue that is unreasonable to ask of an extremely low-income mother.
Felton declined to comment directly on the lawsuit. But in its legal filings, SHA's attorneys counter the agency did nothing wrong and gave Townes and Wilson fair hearings prior to terminating them.
In court documents, the housing authority said Townes's daughter lived for a time with her father and custody was unclear.
Lawyers for Townes argue that the housing authority's hearing officers disregarded facts, disability law and other relevant arguments.
By failing to provide sufficient hearings, SHA ended up denying people the housing they need to survive, they said.
In its legal filings, SHA counters housing subsidies are not a right.
"Housing," one brief states, quoting a 1982 Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling, "is not within the small circle of interests recognized as 'fundamental.'"