HUD Announces Voluntary Compliance Agreement with Housing Authority of the City of Atlanta, Georgia

HUD announced in November that it had approved a Voluntary Compliance Agreement (VCA) with the Housing Authority of the City of Atlanta, Georgia (AHA) resolving findings after a compliance review.

The findings by HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO) stated that the Housing Authority had failed to comply with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (Section 504) and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), by inadequately monitoring its subrecipient housing providers, who failed to process and delayed reasonable accommodation requests, as well as insufficient record keeping of such requests as required under HUD regulations.

HUD’s compliance review demonstrated that AHA should make significant improvements to meet its responsibilities. HUD’s systemic compliance review of the housing provider included over 400 interviews of tenants, staff interviews, interrogatories of property managers, and the review of hundreds of policy and procedure documents. The Letter of Findings (LOF) identified numerous issues with AHA’s oversight and enforcement of Section 504 for its housing partners and specifically identified 15 victims of discrimination based on disability.

The three-year VCA that AHA entered includes a $2 million dollar victims fund that will pay compensation to the parties outlined in the LOF and to additional unidentified parties who have a right to have their accommodation denial reviewed. The VCA also requires extensive changes to the AHA’s monitoring and oversight of its subrecipient housing partners, such as increased training, monthly audits of reasonable accommodation logs, an updated website and grievance policies, and other provisions to ensure that persons with disabilities can request and receive reasonable accommodations.

Click here to read the full Voluntary Compliance Agreement.

Click here to read HUD’s press release.