Serena Dewakuku bought a house that was built by the Hopi Tribal Housing Authority through an assistance program that helps low-income Indian families. After she bought the house, Serena found that it had serious structural and design problems. She reported this to the housing authority, but it did nothing to fix the problems. Serena sued claiming that the home she had bought from her housing authority did not meet the standards of a federal law called the Indian Housing Act, which was created to make sure any subsidized housing was of good quality.
The court that heard Serena's case agreed that the housing authority had violated the law and ordered it to fix the problems. The housing authority challenged this ruling and the case went back to court. This time, the appeals court threw her case out of court on a technicality: This court said that although the housing law said Ms. Dewakuku had rights, it didn't explicitly say she could go to court if those rights were violated.
Ms. Dewakuku couldn't go to court and she was stuck with a defective and badly built home. This court tells us that even if a housing authority violates the law, the people who buy shoddily built homes have no legal remedy in court. We may think we have rights because of certain laws, but we can't necessarily enforce them.
Dewakuku v. Martinez, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (2001)
For more information about housing rights, go that section.
PEOPLE HAVE THE RIGHT TO "DECENT, SAFE, AND SANITARY" HOUSING. THEY JUST CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT IF IT ISN'T.
The Housing Act of 1937 was created to make sure that any subsidized housing was "decent, safe, and sanitary." But the families living in a subsidized apartment complex in Dallas had conditions that were anything but. The buildings had serious structural problems--floors separating from walls, leaking roofs and ceilings, backed up sewage drains. The buildings and hallways were repeatedly and constantly vandalized. There were murders and other violent crimes committed on a regular basis. The tenants complained to the housing authority with an average of 2-3 letters every day. One complaint said: "A man died in my front door early Monday morning in fact two men were killed in the apts. the same morning." There were regular gun battles, and a seven-year-old boy named Charles Cleveland was killed in the crossfire. The Dallas housing authority failed to take action to ensure that the housing was "decent, safe, and sanitary," and the situation only deteriorated.
Finally, the families got together and sued their housing authority and the owners of the building for breaking the law. It seemed they were successful when, at first, the housing authority stopped giving rental assistance to the landlords. The case went to trial, and the jury found the apartment owners guilty of violating the Housing Act.
Even though the case went to trial and the jury agreed that the landlords had violated the law, the court disagreed, and disregarded the jury's decision, based on a technicality. Although the federal housing law spelled out rights, this court decided that it didn't spell out exactly what could be done if those rights were violated. The court essentially ruled that there was no federal right to decent housing and shut its doors on these families and others whose rights to a decent, safe, and sanitary home under the Fair Housing Act are violated.
Banks v. Dallas Housing Authority (2001)
One-hundred-and-two-year-old Dorsey Pierce, a resident of the Buckhannon Board and Care Home, was told by his state of West Virginia that he could not continue to live at Buckhannon because of a law called the "self-preservation rule" that prohibited the home from housing people who could not exit the facility without aid in the case of a fire. Buckhannon, Mr. Pierce and other residents sued the state, saying that this law discriminated against people with disabilities. Before the case could be decided, however, the West Virginia Legislature repealed the self-preservation rule, and thus the Court said that it no longer needed to rule on the case. Even though they didn't technically win their case in a court of law, Mr. Pierce and the home believed that it was their lawsuit that had lead to the repeal of this law and the favorable outcome and asked the Court to award them attorneys' fees. The Supreme Court ruled that because they had not won the suit in court they couldn't get their money back.
Buckhannon Board and Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Dept. of Health and Human Resources (2001)
For more information on housing rights, go to that section.