Massachusetts Law Reform Institute
99 Chauncy Street, Suite 500
Boston, MA 02111-1703
PHONE 617-357-0700 # FAX 617-357-0777 # www.mlri.org
August 26, 2010
Shaun Donovan, Secretary
Sandra Henriquez, Assistant Secretary, Office of Public and Indian Housing
Barbara Sard, Senior Advisor for Rental Assistance
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
451 Seventh Street, S.W.
Washington, DC 20410
Sent by email and regular mail
Re: Applying for HUD-Assisted Housing: Proposals for Change
Dear Secretary Donovan, Assistant Secretary Henriquez, and Ms. Sard:
We write to you as legal services and civil rights lawyers and members of the Housing Justice
Network (HJN), an organization of legal services housing advocates from around the country.1
For many years the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute (MLRI) and our colleagues in other
states have worked to make the process of applying for HUD-assisted housing fair, nondiscriminatory,
and more user-friendly for families and individuals. MLRI has documented the
inequities of local application systems, litigated, brought complaints at HUD, spoken at
conferences and negotiated for improved application systems with PHAs. Although we have
achieved some good success in Massachusetts, there is more to be done there, and even more
work is needed in other areas of the country. We write now to request that HUD initiate a
process to develop application procedures that are equitable, efficient, and non-discriminatory,
and we hope to discuss these issues with you in the near future.
The Problem: Two Videos Worth a Thousand Words
Two videos vividly portray the awful consequences of using an in-person application process. Although the events depicted in these videos are separated by thirteen years, they are in most respects identical. The first, End of the Line, was made by MLRI in 1997 and documents the experience of people attempting to pick up Section 8 applications at the Fall River Housing Authority in southeastern Massachusetts. See http://www.mlri.org/advocacy/housing. The second is a report about a similar application process at the East Point (Georgia) Housing Authority on August 11, 2010. See www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/38667261#38667261.
End of the Line shows more than a thousand people who came to the housing authority in response to public notices and waited, some overnight, to get an application for the Section 8 voucher program—just an application, not a voucher. The scenes are heartbreaking—elders,
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1 This letter is not a formal submission from HJN. However, we believe that because these observations and proposals mirror those in HJN comments to HUD’s PETRA proposal submitted on May 3 and July 30, 2010, it fairly represents the concerns of our HJN colleagues.
