Also known as: Section 8 · Section Eight Program · Housing Choice Voucher Program · Section 8 housing · HUD Section 8
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A federal rental subsidy program administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development under which eligible low-income tenants pay a portion of the rent for privately owned housing units while the government covers the balance through housing assistance payments to landlords.
Stonehaven Properties, a landlord participating in the Section 8 program, pledged its portfolio of assisted leases as collateral for a loan. The secured party took physical possession of the original lease documents and tenant files. Because possession was obtained, the security interest became perfected even though no financing statement was filed.
Silverline Industries owns multiple Section 8 properties through a corporate subsidiary. Three directors elected two years earlier saw their terms expire at the next annual shareholders meeting. The corporation could not act on a proposed rent adjustment until new directors were seated.
Sydney Santos, a Section 8 tenant, challenged the constitutionality of the federal appropriations that funded her housing assistance. The court sustained the program as a valid exercise of congressional spending authority tied to the general welfare.
The Social Security Act was enacted on August 14, 1935. Title VIII of the Act imposes an income tax on employees measured by wages paid during the calendar year and an excise tax on employers with respect to having individuals in their employ, also measured by wages. Both taxes start at one percent for 1937 to 1939 and increase by one-half of one percent every three years thereafter up to three percent. It exempts agricultural labor, domestic service, government service, and persons over age 65. Wages in excess of $3,000 per year are excluded from the computation. Title II of the Act creates an Old-Age Reserve Account in the Treasury and authorizes annual appropriations to it beginning with the fiscal year ending June 30, 1937. The amount is determined on a reserve basis using actuarial principles and a three percent interest rate. It provides for monthly pensions beginning in 1942 to persons who have attained age 65, worked at least one day in each of five separate years since December 31, 1936, earned at least $2,000 since that date, and are not receiving wages from regular employment. Benefits do not exceed $85 per month and are measured by a percentage of wages that decreases as wages increase, as well as certain lump sum payments in specified contingencies. A shareholder of the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of Boston brought suit in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts to enjoin the corporation from making the payments and deductions required by the Act. The bill alleged that the corporation had decided to obey the statute despite the shareholder's protests. Compliance would cause employee unrest, demands for increased wages, and irreparable loss to the corporation and its shareholders from which recovery would be impossible as a practical matter. The corporation appeared and answered without raising any issue of fact. The United States Commissioner of Internal Revenue and the United States Collector for the District of Massachusetts intervened as defendants. The District Court held that the tax upon employees was not properly at issue and that the tax upon employers was constitutional. It denied the injunction and dismissed the bill. The Circuit Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed the decree. The intervening defendants petitioned for a writ of certiorari. The petition presented two questions: whether the tax imposed upon employers by section 804 is within the power of Congress under the Constitution, and whether the validity of the tax imposed upon employees by section 801 is properly in issue and if so whether that tax is within the power of Congress under the Constitution. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
View caseSolomon Silver organized a labor protest at a Section 8 apartment complex managed by Synergy Systems. The owner sought to bar the picketers from the private driveway. The court held that the First Amendment did not compel access because the property was not a public forum.
Scott Hudgens owns the North DeKalb Shopping Center in suburban Atlanta, Georgia. The center consists of a single large building with an enclosed mall. Surrounding the building is a parking area that can accommodate 2,640 automobiles. The shopping center houses 60 retail stores leased to businesses such as the Butler Shoe Company store that can be entered only from the interior mall. In January 1971, warehouse employees of the Butler Shoe Company went on strike to protest the company's failure to agree to demands made by their union in contract negotiations. The strikers decided to picket not only Butler's warehouse but its nine retail stores in the Atlanta area as well, including the store in the North DeKalb Shopping Center. On January 22, 1971, four of the striking warehouse employees entered the center's enclosed mall carrying placards which read "Butler Shoe Warehouse on Strike, AFL-CIO, Local 315." The general manager informed the employees that they could not picket within the mall or on the parking lot and threatened them with arrest if they did not leave. The employees departed but returned a short time later and began picketing in an area of the mall immediately adjacent to the entrances of the Butler store. After the picketing had continued for approximately 30 minutes, the shopping center manager again informed the pickets that if they did not leave they would be arrested for trespassing, and the pickets departed. The union subsequently filed with the National Labor Relations Board an unfair labor practice charge against Hudgens. After the Board initially entered a cease-and-desist order relying on Food Employees v. Logan Valley Plaza, this Court decided Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner and Central Hardware Co. v. NLRB, leading the Court of Appeals to remand the case to the Board for reconsideration. Upon remand, an Administrative Law Judge made findings that Hudgens had committed an unfair labor practice. The Board agreed with those findings and recommendations though on somewhat different reasoning. The Court of Appeals enforced the Board's cease-and-desist order, and this Court granted certiorari to consider the questions presented.
View caseSamantha Stone refused to rent a unit to Selena Singh solely because Singh planned to use a Section 8 voucher. The court held that the refusal violated federal commerce power legislation prohibiting discrimination in housing transactions that affect interstate commerce.
The appellant, Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc., owns and operates a 216-room motel located on Courtland Street in Atlanta, Georgia, two blocks from downtown Peachtree Street. The motel is readily accessible to interstate highways 75 and 85 and state highways 23 and 41. It solicits patronage from outside Georgia through national advertising media, maintains over 50 billboards and highway signs, accepts convention trade from outside the state, and approximately 75 percent of its registered guests are from out of state. The motel provides lodging to transient guests along with restaurant facilities and prior to the Act had followed a practice of refusing to rent rooms to Negroes. The United States filed suit against the appellant in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia under Sections 206(a) and 206(b) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The complaint alleged that the appellant was operating a motel in which it refused to accept Negro guests solely because of their race. The appellant offered no evidence at trial, submitting the case on the pleadings, admissions, and stipulation of facts, though the appellees proved the refusal to accept Negro transients after passage of the Act. The District Court granted the government's motion for summary judgment and issued a permanent injunction restraining the appellant from continuing its discriminatory practices, citing 231 F. Supp. 393. The case reached the Supreme Court on direct appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1252. The motel is located at the intersection of two major interstate highways and advertises in national magazines and on billboards directed at interstate travelers. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on July 2, 1964, following extensive hearings before Senate and House committees on bills including S. 1732 and H.R. 7152. The Act's Title II, set forth in 42 U.S.C. § 2000a et seq., provides that all persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation without discrimination on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin. The appellant admitted that 75 percent of its guests come from out of state. The motel's policy of refusing to rent rooms to Negroes has the effect of impeding interstate travel by Negro citizens.
View caseSofia Stern, a Section 8 landlord, challenged a state requirement that she accept federal inspection standards as a condition of continued participation. The court upheld the condition because Congress may attach requirements to federal spending programs that states voluntarily accept.
The history of public transportation in San Antonio began with private operators. In 1959 the City of San Antonio purchased the privately owned San Antonio Transit Company and replaced it with the publicly owned San Antonio Transit System. In 1978 the city transferred its facilities and equipment to appellee San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, a public mass-transit authority organized on a countywide basis. SAMTA became the major provider of transportation in the San Antonio metropolitan area. Between 1978 and 1980 its vehicles traveled over 26 million route miles and carried over 63 million passengers. San Antonio began receiving federal subsidies under the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964. SATS and SAMTA received over $51 million in UMTA grants from December 1970 through February 1980. This total included $12.5 million in operating grants during SAMTA's first two fiscal years. The Fair Labor Standards Act was enacted in 1938 without applying to local mass-transit employees. Congress amended the statute in 1961 to extend minimum-wage coverage to private mass-transit carriers with annual gross revenue of at least $1 million. In 1966 Congress withdrew exemptions from public hospitals, schools, and mass-transit carriers whose rates and services were subject to state regulation. The 1974 amendments provided for the progressive repeal of the surviving overtime exemption for mass-transit employees while extending FLSA coverage to virtually all state and local government employees. Following the 1976 decision in National League of Cities v. Usery, SATS informed its employees that the decision relieved it of overtime obligations under the FLSA. On September 17, 1979, the Wage and Hour Administration of the Department of Labor issued an opinion that SAMTA's operations were not constitutionally immune from the FLSA. On November 21, 1979, SAMTA filed suit against the Secretary of Labor in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas seeking declaratory relief. On the same day appellant Garcia and other SAMTA employees sued SAMTA in the same court for overtime pay under the FLSA. On November 17, 1981, the District Court granted SAMTA's motion for summary judgment. The court held that local public mass-transit systems constitute integral operations in areas of traditional governmental functions. After the Supreme Court decided Transportation Union v. Long Island R. Co. in 1982, the District Court's judgment was vacated and remanded. On remand the District Court adhered to its original view and again entered judgment for SAMTA in 1983. The Secretary and Garcia took direct appeals. The Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction, restored the cases for reargument after initial argument, and requested briefing on whether the principles of the Tenth Amendment as set forth in National League of Cities v. Usery should be reconsidered.
View caseYes. Several states and localities treat source-of-income discrimination as unlawful, and courts have applied those statutes to landlords who attempt to opt out of the Section 8 program after initially participating.
Tenants generally pay 30 percent of their adjusted income toward rent, with the housing authority covering the remainder up to the applicable payment standard.
No. Program rules require good cause for termination after the initial lease term, and eviction notices may be issued by the landlord but must comply with both the lease and federal requirements.
HUD may use comparability studies to cap rent adjustments even when the contract itself does not expressly prohibit them, provided the studies are authorized by statute.
…L. Rev. 574, 574 n. 1 (1972), citing Huxtable, Bank’s Building Plan Sets Off Debate on “Progress,” N. Y. Times, Jan. 17, 1971, section 8, p. 1, col. 2. : See, e. g. , N. Y. C. Admin. Code § 205-1.0 (a) (1976). : Gilbert, Introduction, Precedents for the Future, 36 Law & Contemp. Prob. 311, 312 (1971),…