Daily Business Review, July 22, 2009
By: Paola Iuspa-Abbott

At 86, Aida Flores never knows if she will be able to make her next month’s rent payment. Her pension and Social Security checks add up to about $648 a month. Yet, rent on her one-bedroom Hialeah apartment is $665 a month, said Flores, who survives on $59 in food stamps a month.

“I don’t want to leave this place,” she said, sitting on her sofa in her neatly decorated living room. “This is home to me. My daughter lives a few doors down, and I need to be close to her. She brings me my groceries and checks on me every day.”

Flores should be eligible to receive a rent subsidy through the federal government’s Section 8 housing program. Federal funds would cover a large portion of her rent, but despite four years of trying she has been repeatedly denied and now she is taking her case to federal court.

Flores has applied with the Hialeah Housing Authority to participate in the Section 8 program, a federal program which subsidizes rent payments for the needy.

Several trips to the Hialeah agency that manages Section 8 funding in the city and countless hours gathering documents proving she is poor have resulted in nothing. The housing authority denied her Section 8 application last year, claiming she failed to provide enough information from her current landlord. Flores says she presented four letters from her landlord, but was told it wasn’t enough.

Flores, who says she lives in a constant state of anxiety over her rent, represented by lawyers from Greater Miami Legal Services, sued the Hialeah Housing Authority and its board of directors last week. She is asking a federal judge to order the housing authority to follow its rules and give her the federal rent subsidy.

Flores and co-plaintiffs Georgina de Leon, Manuel Lopez and Aida Villarta claim the housing agency has violated federal laws, including the Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disability Act, and violated its own administrative due process rules.

Alex Morales, executive director of the Hialeah Housing Authority, said he hasn’t had a chance to review the lawsuit and could not comment. He said the “housing authority works diligently to ensure that it provides high quality service to all its applicants.”

Legal Services of Greater Miami and the Florida Justice Institute are representing the plaintiffs, who are all indigent, disabled and elderly, according to the complaint.

Legal Services attorney Jeffrey Hearne said the Hialeah agency needs to adjust its practices at a time when the country faces its worst recession since the Great Depression.

“There are so many more people who are in need of housing right now,” he said. “It seems extraordinarily improper for the housing authority to be denying housing benefits to people for such unimportant things and trivial reasons.”

Like Flores, Manuel Lopez is struggling to pay rent and says he has received no help from the housing agency.

He suffers from diabetes, depression and since 2004 has battled chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which makes it difficult for him to breathe. Lopez applied for the Hialeah Section 8 program in 2005. Since then, he had submitted several documents — including a statement from the Social Security Administration — proving his disability. Still, the agency denied his application early this year.

Legal Services lawyers argue the housing authority’s own administrative plan requires the agency to verify applicants’ information, like disabilities, through third party sources. If critical information is not provided, the agency must tell the applicant which document they need.

The suit says the agency is violating its own guidelines by placing the burden of proof on the applicant.

“We are not asking them to change their procedure,” Legal Services attorney Sean Rowley said. “We are asking them to follow the procedures that are already there.”

Hearne and Rowley said the Hialeah Housing Authority for several years “illegitimately” has denied benefits to applicants and participants to its Section 8 Program.

“This has led to the denial of important housing benefits to many poor, elderly and disabled residents who should be receiving housing assistance,” Rowley said.

FIGHTING FRAUD

Morales in April told the Daily Business Review the agency had a strict Section 8 tenant screening process to fight fraud. He said applicants can easily commit fraud by withholding or providing false information.

“[Applicants] are frustrated,” he said. “But we are frustrated, too. People lie. Maybe we are too zealous.”

Legal Services’ Hearne said his clients are being required to provide documents that have nothing to do with fraud prevention.

For example, the housing authority is asking for a phone bill from when his client applied for a rent subsidy years ago, he said. “How does that have any basis from whether that’s fraud or not.”

Often, the agency asks applicants, like Flores, to provide personal and financial information about people who helped them financially in the past. If those people don’t want to provide bank statements, proof of income, tax records or car registration to the agency, the applicants can be rejected, Hearne said.

“What if that person says, ‘I don’t want to give you my tax records and car registration and my utility bills?’ What’s the applicant to do at that point?” Hearne asked.

Morales admits some of the housing authority staff needs better training to work with Section 8 applicants. He said his staff should be more consistent in the type of documents they request to verify information.

“We haven’t had a training conference in two years,” he said. “It is time to have one.”

Morales said he had been “thinking for a while” about making changes to the way his office operates.

Early this year, Morales said an employee in charge of reviewing the Section 8 applications was transferred to another department after he realized she “was looking for reasons to deny” applicants.

Morales also said he plans to make changes among hearing officers who decide if a denial should be overturned. Some hearing officers overturn 10 percent of their cases, others overturn 40 percent.

“We want to reduce the rate of denial,” he said.

DISCRIMINATION CHARGES

Separately, Legal Services and the AARP Foundation Litigation on Tuesday filed an additional lawsuit in the U.S. District Court alleging the agency discriminated against a disabled Section 8 participant by not providing adequate accommodations.

Section 8 tenant Estella Gilchrist suffers from bipolar disorder and psychotic reactions, as well as arthritis and spinal stenosis. She has difficulty cooking, cleaning and sleeping.

In September, she asked the agency to allow her to have a live-in aide. After a 15-minute home visit, the agency decided Gilchrist could get by with a part-time visiting aide and rejected her request.

The lawsuit says the agency violated the U.S. Fair Housing Act and the Rehabilitation Act. The suit wants U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke to order the agency to rescind its decision and allow the live-in aide.

Paola Iuspa-Abbott can be reached at (305) 347-6657.

Aida Flores photo by Paola Iuspa-Abbott