Judges from Georgia’s Court of Appeals ruled earlier this month that the Housing Authority of Augusta cannot be blamed for incidents occurring in their public housing units, court records show. The Macon Housing Authority and the housing organizations in Columbus and Decatur supported this decision.
It’s based on a June 21, 2022 lawsuit filed by Christina Guy, a former tenant of Dogwood Terrace, after she was shot in the leg during an attempted robbery. She argued that the Augusta Housing Authority failed to provide reasonable security and take measures to hinder violent crime. The housing authority, however, said they were immune to these claims as a government entity. Richmond County’s State Court Judge Kellie McIntyre agreed.
Guy appealed the decision, saying the trial court “erred” in the judge’s ruling, sending the case to the Court of Appeals in Georgia.
The housing authorities of Macon, Columbus and Decatur supported the Augusta Housing Authority in this case, saying that the Georgia courts have recognized throughout history that public housing authorities were “instrumentalities” to the state, and are entitled to sovereign immunity. They, as well as the Augusta Housing Authority, also argued that it could open the “floodgates” of premise liability lawsuits if not considered immune.
“The outcome of this case will significantly impact Housing Authorities’ ability to fulfill the public purposes announced by the General Assembly ... and will significantly affect the availability of affordable housing in Georgia,” the housing authorities of Macon, Columbus and Decatur said.
Crimes and liability
Mike Austin, the CEO of the Macon Housing Authority, said this decision is important for housing authorities because barriers like rising liability insurance, inflation and lawsuits against them make it “really, really hard for affordable housing operators to continue to operate and provide that essential service to many people.”
“Because of lawsuits, they’ve increased their insurance premiums to the point where it’s almost unaffordable for affordable housing operators to pay those premiums,” Austin said.
He also said that although housing authorities cannot guarantee security, they employ measures like a neighborhood watch system and the hiring of off-duty police officers interested in working extra hours to make “the environment as safe as possible.”
But when crimes occur, liability comes into play, according to Austin.
“And so with affordable housing, the concept of sovereign immunity, based on the fact that housing authorities are performing an essential government function, comes into play,” said Austin. “And that’s really why we think that housing authorities who are operating affordable housing should be afforded that, just like the county and just like a city and state and so on.”
An ‘imbalanced landlord-tenant relationship’
Jason Branch, the president of the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association, and Mike Walker of Piasta Walker Hagenbush, LLC wrote a document to the appeals court in Guy’s defense, saying it would “bar thousands of low-income Georgians from seeking redress from their landlord’s negligence.”
“Despite routinely defending those claims, the Housing Authority of the City of Augusta and three amici now urge this Court to recognize housing authorities, for the first time in nearly a century, as immune from suit,” the lawyers said. “They now portray themselves as state entities or municipal corporations. They are neither.”
Both lawyers further argue that a housing authority is not a municipal corporation, since municipal corporations carry out “the state’s powers as its political subdivision,” and the housing authorities do not carry any of the functions of one. It doesn’t share funds with the state or the city, it cannot tax and their debts don’t become the state’s or the city’s, the lawyers claim.
“And while the housing authorities in this case complain of opening litigation “floodgates” if they are not dressed in immunity, they have already defended such claims for decades,” they said. “They have not identified any evidence that such cases have harmed their abilities to provide safe housing since 1938.”
“On the other hand, granting housing authorities immunity from suit will immediately alter an already imbalanced landlord-tenant relationship.”
Housing authority and sovereign immunity
In Guy’s request to the appeal judges, she said that if the housing authority was given sovereign immunity under Georgia law, they had waived their right to it when they purchased liability insurance.
She referenced two other Court of Appeals cases where they ruled that housing authorities were not entitled to sovereign immunity because it’s not an agency, department or instrumentality of the state. Further, she included a statement from the Supreme Court on a similar case warning that “there is a clear distinction between a political subdivision such as a county and a corporate body such as a (housing) authority.”
However, the Augusta Housing Authority said immunity is “practically necessary for public housing authorities to operate in Georgia.”
“The original concept of sovereign immunity is that the king cannot be sued in his own court, though courts also explain that private citizens should not be able to collect funds from the public purse,” the Augusta Houston Authority said. “It would be odd indeed for the public to allocate a specified amount of public funds to house the homeless, only to then be sued by that assisted clientele for not providing better homes.”
Lawsuit dismissed
The judges concluded that since the housing authority is performing an “essential public and governmental function” for Augusta, the housing authority is entitled to immunity and affirmed Judge McIntyre’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit.
“We conclude, therefore, particularly when viewed in the historical context of our sovereign immunity jurisprudence, that the Authority is an instrumentality of the City of Augusta such that it is entitled to sovereign immunity,” the appeal judges said in their decision.
After the appeal judges decided to grant the Augusta Housing Authority immunity in this case, court documents show that last Friday Guy warned that she’ll be taking the case to the Supreme Court in Georgia for review.
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