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Saturday, May 30, 2009

Dakota County housing crackdown sweeps up the guilty — and the innocent

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posted by Bob at Saturday, May 30, 2009

7 Comments:

Anonymous Topic requested said...

Agency under fire for its aggressive pursuit of rule-breakers
By Frederick Melo
fmelo@pioneerpress.com
Updated: 05/29/2009 11:27:03 PM CDT


In 2001, Nicole Fyksen spent three days in jail after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor assault.

Six years later, the Dakota County Community Development Agency determined she had failed to disclose the incident on her applications for federal Section 8 housing assistance. The agency terminated her benefits, saying she had misrepresented herself.

Hayyate Ali's misdeed was more mundane. She missed two appointments to have her benefits recertified. The first letter notifying her about the scheduled meeting arrived late, she said, and she never saw the second one. She needed the housing aid to afford an apartment for herself and her 4-year-old daughter.

Her benefits were canceled in October 2007.

Deeqa Hassan's aid was canceled after she gave officials a copy of her bank statement instead of pay stubs as proof of income.

Ayan Hassan noted in her recertification application that she intended to have the father of her five children move in. The agency dropped her based on the suspicion he was already living there.

In each of these instances, a St. Paul-based legal aid society argued the Dakota County housing authority had been too harsh based on sometimes-limited evidence. The Minnesota Court of Appeals agreed.

The cases underscore the extent to which the housing authority has taken pains to crack down on rule-breakers — efforts it defends but that some attorneys say have missed the mark and ensnared low-income tenants who meant no wrong.

In 2007, lawyers with the Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services fought eight decisions by the housing authority, appealing to have the tenants' benefits reinstated. Since October, the Court of Appeals has ruled against the county in five of the cases, by either returning a recipient's benefits outright or ordering the authority to reopen a hearing into the tenant's alleged rules violations.

The back-to-back wins for Legal Services are almost unheard of and have taken some seasoned legal advocates by surprise.

9:12 AM  
Anonymous story continued said...

GLUT OF REVERSALS

Lawrence McDonough, who has no connection to the Dakota County cases, said he has represented low-income clients for 25 years and has never seen so many reversals come out against a housing agency.

"That just really blew my mind," said McDonough, a managing attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Minneapolis. "That's a really high success rate at the appellate level. I'm guessing that the success rate, in general, for appeals is 20 to 30 percent."

He said he believes most of the Dakota County plaintiffs had been penalized for minor errors, such as paperwork snafus, as opposed to criminal wrongdoing. Three were Somali, and at least one did not speak English. Another tenant owed $24 after paying back income she had failed to report.

Officials with the housing authority said they go through a series of formal procedures before terminating benefits. Tenants sign a contract before accepting Section 8 subsidies, affirming they understand their duty to declare any changes in income or household size.

Low-income housing is highly sought after, and the agency is audited regularly by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is in turn beholden to Congress, said Mark Ulfers, executive director of the Dakota County agency.

"We take being a program administrator, and our obligations to the federal government, seriously," Ulfers said. "We still think the percentage of these cases we've had go through the court, compared to our overall population, is modest."

The agency provides Section 8 housing to 3,000 households, according to agency officials, with a turnover rate of about 10 percent each year.

Demand for the program is intense: An additional 3,800 households remain on a waiting list.

If a tenant wants to contest the decision to end or reduce his housing assistance, he can request an informal hearing before an officer contracted by the agency. There were 45 termination hearings in 2006 and 46 in 2008. Four cases went on to the Court of Appeals in 2006; half of those were affirmed. Two cases went to appeal last year, and decisions are pending.

9:18 AM  
Anonymous story continued said...

But 2007 was an especially busy year: 88 hearings and eight appeals. Three were reversed; three were upheld; and two were reopened.

Some attorneys say the contrasting experience of even larger housing authorities with far fewer hearings and appeals is telling.

"It's real uncommon for a Section 8 appeal to go up to the Court of Appeals, in our experience," said Al Hester, housing policy director with the St. Paul Public Housing Agency. "We're thinking maybe we've had two in 20 years."

A spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Council, which administers the largest Section 8 program in the state, said records going back to 1998 show the Metro Housing and Redevelopment Authority has had three termination cases heard before the Court of Appeals. The housing authority, which has twice as many Section 8 clients as Dakota County, won all three cases.

Mike Hagedorn, an attorney with Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services, worked on several of the cases appealed in Dakota County. He said his office is too small and too busy to go fishing for clients or argue cases that have no merit.

"In the last year or so, there have been more cases that have come our way from Dakota County," Hagedorn said. "I know Dakota County is very much interested in cracking down on fraud and people who make serious misrepresentations. We look very carefully at cases, and if it looks like there's a good chance a person has engaged in deceptive or fraudulent conduct, that's not likely the type of case we would take."

"It may be — and I don't know — that Dakota County is a little more aggressive than it should be," Hagedorn said.

9:19 AM  
Anonymous story continued said...

SIMILAR CASES, DIFFERENT RULINGS

In one of the three cases decided in Dakota County's favor, a single mother who was three months pregnant failed to report three short-term jobs she'd held through a staffing agency. Angela Sandstrom's benefits were terminated even though she repaid all but $24 before meeting with a hearing officer, according to court documents.

Siding with the housing authority, the appeals court found her behavior fit a pattern of wrongdoing and that there was enough evidence to show she was aware of her obligation to report the income.

The court felt differently about Hayyate Ali.

Ali, also pregnant when her benefits were terminated, testified she did not receive the authority's scheduling letter dated Aug. 9, 2007, until Aug. 28, the day of her annual recertification appointment. She called the agency's customer-service line to explain she was busy getting her 4-year-old child ready for school and not feeling well because of morning sickness.

She "testified that she was put on hold for a long time but eventually spoke to a representative who said that someone would contact (her) to reschedule," read the court findings.

The authority sent her another letter, dated Aug. 30, but Ali said she never received it. In mid-September, she went to agency offices to make a payment and set up a make-up date, but she learned she had already missed a second meeting.

She was notified two weeks later that her benefits would be terminated by the end of October.

Siding with Ali, the court found there were no federal requirements mandating a tenant's attendance at the annual meetings. None of the evidence showed "she violated the conditions of the program in any way other than having failed to attend an appointment of which she was not aware."

Hagedorn said the Dakota County cases aren't entirely unique. His office, which represents clients in 33 counties, has dealt with housing authorities across the Twin Cities and found common themes.

"We have seen some cases where participants are not proficient in English. We see situations where that may really be at the root of the problem. There may be a miscommunication, and the housing agency doesn't take that into account as a factor," Hagedorn said.

"And then there are other cases where there are mitigating factors," he said. "If there's a violation of program rules, it doesn't seem like a very serious violation ... and a family is at risk of possibly becoming homeless."

Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172.

9:20 AM  
Blogger Bob said...

Hi All,

I'm sorry I have to post these stories under several post. Blogger restricted the comment section of blogs to 4096 characters per post. IT SUCKS!

9:21 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

More assaults on the poor.

12:55 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maybe the cubans can go to Dakota County.

4:47 PM  

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