Tenants sue for utility allowance
By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
HILO, Hawai'i — Lawyers for tenants in public housing projects across the state have filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court alleging the state failed to give residents of up to 2,800 housing units the full monthly utility allowance they are entitled to receive under federal law.
Gavin Thornton, an attorney with Lawyers for Equal Justice, said the state pays an allowance to many low-income public housing tenants, but failed to update and increase the utility allowance during the past 10 years.
A suit against the Housing and Community Development Corp. of Hawai'i, filed Thursday in federal court in Honolulu, seeks an injunction requiring the state to adjust the utility allowance. Another suit in Kona Circuit Court seeks a court order requiring the state to repay tenants the money they are allegedly owed from past years.
Housing and Community Development Corp. officials could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Federal law requires that rents charged to tenants at federally financed public housing projects should include utilities. Where housing units are separately metered and tenants are billed directly by utility companies, the state agency is required to pay the tenants a utility allowance that roughly matches their utility bills, Thornton said.
The allowance lagged behind the cost of utilities because the state has not recalculated the allowance in years, and Thornton estimated the tenants in federally financed housing projects may be owed more than $2.5 million for underpayments in the past two years alone.
Lawyers for Equal Justice attorney Susan Dorsey said the underpayments work out to an average of about $50 per month per family.
"Many of these families have a tough time just putting food on the table. They cannot afford to pay for such a costly blunder," said Thornton in a written statement.
Thornton said he discovered the alleged utility allowance underpayments while researching rent calculations for Kona public housing tenants.
Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 935-3916.
