SBLS Victory Featured in Shriver Center Clearinghouse Review

South Brooklyn Legal Services (a program of Legal Services NYC) Housing Unit Co-Director Michael Weisberg recently authored a case note that was featured in the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law’s Clearinghouse Review: Journal of Poverty Law and Policy. The case note concerns a recent SBLS victory in the effort to require that landlords accept Section 8 vouchers as reasonable accommodations under the Fair Housing Amendments Act (FHAA).

An abstract of the article follows:

In what is believed to be only the second
ruling of its kind nationwide, the United States District Court for the Eastern
District of New York held that the Fair Housing Amendments Act (“FHAA”), 42
U.S.C. § 3601 et seq., could
require a landlord to accept a disabled tenant’s Section 8 Housing Choice
Voucher subsidy, where the subsidy is necessary for the tenant to use and enjoy
her apartment, in Freeland v. Sisao
LLC, 2008 WL 906746 (E.D.N.Y. Apr. 21, 2008). Accepting the
plaintiff’s argument that United States Supreme Court decision in U.S. Airways, Inc. v. Barnett, 535 U.S.
391 (2002), had changed the law with respect to what is an “accommodation”
within the meaning of the FHAA, the court declined to follow the Second
Circuit’s precedential holding in Salute v.
Stratford Greens Garden Apts., 136 F.3d 293 (2^d Cir.
1998). In Salute, the Second
Circuit had held that acceptance of a disabled tenant’s Section 8 subsidy was a
so-called “economic” accommodation and thus one that could not be compelled by
the FHAA. Salute, 136 F.3d at
302. The clear lesson is that advocates should not shy away from litigating
cases and seeking accommodations that on initial reflection may appear too
attenuated to the individual’s disability.

The full article is available to Clearinghouse Review subscribers, or for purchase, at Povertylaw.org.

Freeland v. Sisao LLC was also the focus of a piece in the July 2008 National Housing Law Project Bulletin (PDF), and was a Decision of Interest in the April 10th New York Law Journal (subscription required).