Our wealth of experience working with government entities provides us with an established and thorough understanding of the issues facing housing authorities, enabling us to move quickly in meeting objectives.
Our clients have included housing authorities in Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. For those groups, we have provided counsel and advice regarding fair housing matters, litigation, eminent domain, construction issues, premises liability, employee benefits, tax matters, and general housing authority law.
We have been proud to assist on investigations, Public Information Act requests, research on procurement laws, drafting or editing interlocal governmental agreements, drafting or editing commercial leases, handling various types of litigation, and more.
Our attorneys also provide annual training on preventing and reporting sexual harassment, investigation of claims of harassment, discrimination, and/or retaliation. We draft policies, review contracts, assist in day-to-day governance challenges, and have worked on commercial evictions and the defense of redevelopment of property.
A sampling of our significant work for housing authorities includes:
- Walker v. HUD and Dallas Housing Authority – On December 21, 2004, a Dallas district court signed an Agreed Final Judgment in this federal desegregation housing case. African-American Plaintiffs filed this class action suit in 1985, alleging the DHA engaged in systematic racial segregation through its construction and maintenance of public housing in Dallas. We became counsel of record in August 2004 and negotiated the final judgment quickly and cost-effectively for DHA. We continue to assist DHA in meeting its obligations under the judgment.
- When HUD announced in 2014 that it would change the formula for funding allocation for the Moving to Work housing program, we met numerous times with HUD and White House officials to discuss the potential problems related to the change. On behalf of the City of Baltimore, we were ultimately able to have the Senate include language in an appropriations bill that did not allow HUD to move forward with the proposed change and allowed Baltimore to keep millions in HUD funding that it was scheduled to lose.
