Housing lawsuit vs. state dropped
Three of the largest public housing authorities in Massachusetts, citing a pledge by Governor Deval Patrick to adequately fund public housing, said yesterday they have dropped a lawsuit that accused the Romney administration of shortchanging the state's nearly 250 local authorities by millions of dollars.
The authorities in Boston, Cambridge, and Brookline signed an agreement with lawyers for the state to shelve the suit after the new administration proposed to increase operating money from $45 million to $60 million in the fiscal year that begins July 1 and to provide other funds, Stephen Young, a lawyer for the three authorities, told the Globe.
Young said Governor Mitt Romney was indifferent to financial woes that the authorities said forced residents to live in deteriorating, even squalid, conditions and prompted the closing of hundreds of substandard apartments. The new administration, Young said, seems committed to improving conditions in the nearly 50,000 public housing apartments statewide for poor, elderly, and disabled residents.
"I think it's fair to say that with the Patrick administration coming into office, the attitude toward dealing with the outrageous condition in public housing changed immediately," said Young, whose clients filed the suit in November in Suffolk Superior Court.
Gregory P. Russ, executive director of the Cambridge Housing Authority, said Patrick sees the state's 247 housing authorities "as a resource, not as a burden."
But Eric Fehrnstrom, a spokesman for Romney, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president, responded that the former governor had to consider what the state could afford. "The people of Massachusetts have always been generous in providing housing, healthcare, and other human services, but it's fair to say that Governor Romney never asked the taxpayers to be more generous than we could afford," he said.
Although only three authorities filed suit, the complaint had sought help for authorities across the state.
After recent meetings with representatives of the three authorities, the administration has proposed raising operating funds for the 247 authorities, calling the $15 million increase a down payment to start making up for years of inadequate funding, Young said. Patrick's staff has also promised to realistically assess the cost of running public housing and to provide money to maintain it.
Patrick has also recommended raising the capital budget for the housing authorities from $55 million to $85 million in the fiscal year that starts July 1, said Tina Brooks, the state's undersecretary for housing and community development. The housing authorities in Boston, Cambridge, and Brookline, which manage about 4,000 apartments, had accused Romney of violating state law by freezing subsidies for operating and maintenance costs for most of his administration.
Yesterday, the heads of the authorities in Cambridge and Brookline said the mere threat of the suit prompted Romney to provide subsidies they were owed in the last months of his administration, including $550,000 to Brookline and $758,000 to Cambridge.
A month before the authorities filed suit, state Auditor A. Joseph DeNucci issued a blistering report that said Romney's funding of public housing had left thousands of residents living in squalor. DeNucci's office reviewed conditions in about a quarter of the housing authorities.
His survey found that more than 1,000 apartments were in such disrepair that they had to be taken off the market, because of missing hand railings, cracked and damaged foundations, extensive mold and mildew damage, and rodent and insect infestation. At the time, 81,000 people were on waiting lists for apartments statewide, DeNucci said.
A 1971 state law, later amended, caps the rent paid by residents of public housing apartments at no more than one third of a household's income, the lawsuit said. The law requires the state to make up the difference between what authorities receive in rent and the cost of operating and maintaining apartments, the suit said.
But a 2005 study by the Harvard Graduate School of Design found that despite the subsidy, authorities were losing on average about $140 a month for each apartment, Young said. That translated into an annual shortfall of about $79 million for the authorities, according to the Harvard study. Lawyers for the plaintiffs and Attorney General Martha Coakley, who was defending the state, signed an agreement to dismiss the suit.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com. 