It happens all the time to low-income tenants: apartments crumbling and in disrepair, mold growing on the walls, pest infestations, unfair extra charges, and landlords who will not make things right so long as they can still make a buck. We are five years out since Matthew Desmond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller, “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” and for these mistreated tenants, there remains little ability to enforce their right to safe and stable housing. For the most part, they remain at the mercy of the almighty landlord.
But a recent Boston-area US Department of Justice enforcement action highlights a very powerful tool available to tenants to help realign this inherent imbalance of power. It’s an option everyone interested in housing justice should keep in mind. It involves using the False Claims Act, DOJ’s principal fraud-fighting statute, to back up aggrieved tenants with the strong arm of the federal government.
That is exactly what DOJ did with its False Claims Act action against a Chelsea landlord for allegedly overcharging tenants who participated in the Housing Choice Voucher Program. Under this program (also referred to as Section 8), HUD covers all or part of a tenant’s monthly rent and utilities subject to the landlord’s agreement not to charge more than the amount set by the local public housing agency administering the program.
In the Chelsea case, the landlord did not stick to its end of the bargain. Instead, unbeknownst to the...
The Kristo Asafo Mission of Ghana has rejected claims that former Dome-Kwabenya Member of Parliament, Sarah Adwoa Safo, was shot during an incident at the church’s property at Kwabenya, describing...