In lawsuit, public housing residents say RRHA systematically hid rent waiver from poorest tenants

A current and a former resident of Richmond’s public housing communities are bringing a class-action lawsuit against the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority, saying it has been systematically overcharging its poorest residents by failing to offer them a federally required exemption from paying rent in certain hardship situations. 

RRHA’s alleged failure to offer the hardship exemption puts the poorest public housing residents “in an impossible position, where they must pay rent they cannot afford, forego other life necessities, or risk eviction and homelessness,” wrote Vernita Coleman and Jayda James.

The pair are being represented by Hunton Andrews Kurth, the Legal Aid Justice Center and the National Housing Law Project, which filed the suit Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

RRHA CEO Steven Nesmith said in a statement that the authority has not yet been served with or read the suit and therefore cannot speak to its merits.

“It is important to note that RRHA takes our responsibility to taxpayers and the citizens of the city of Richmond seriously in providing access to affordable housing,” he wrote. “It is common knowledge that RRHA is in the process of renewed lease enforcement and is moving forward systematically. These actions are likely creating issues and challenges to those who have not honored their responsibility for rental payments.” 

While public housing authorities base the rent they charge residents on their income, federal law requires that they set a minimum monthly rent tenants must pay that can’t exceed $50.

But in some cases, the law also requires authorities to exempt a resident from paying the minimum rent if they are facing certain “hardship” situations like loss of a job, loss of eligibility for a government assistance program they’ve been using, a death in the family or the threat of eviction if they cannot pay the minimum rent. 

Coleman and James, however, argue that RRHA has been deliberately keeping the exemption “secret” from residents. 

Between 2019 and 2024, only one RRHA resident has requested the hardship exemption, and only one has been granted it, according to data obtained by the Legal Aid Justice Center through an open records request and shared with The Richmonder. 

During that time, the number of tenants who were paying the minimum rent and therefore could have been eligible for the exemption in case of hardship ranged from 295 in 2019 to 601 in 2024, the same records request found. 

In some situations, the lack of the exemption has led to eviction proceedings, the lawsuit alleges. 

“RRHA has initiated eviction actions against families based on their failure to pay the minimum rent even when they would have qualified for a Hardship Exemption,” wrote Coleman and James in their suit. “RRHA failed to stop those eviction proceedings and evaluate those households’ eligibility.” 

Coleman, who has lived in Creighton Court since 2004, said she should have been offered the hardship exemption when disability payments she had been receiving were suspended at the end of December 2023. 

The benefits were restarted in May, but during the interim Coleman had to report her change in income to RRHA to have her rent recalculated. As part of that process, she filled out the authority’s “zero income worksheet,” a four-page document that asks detailed questions on tenants’ monthly expenses for food, personal and household supplies, communications, transportation, entertainment, clothing and shelter. 

Coleman said that RRHA never brought up the possibility of a hardship exemption, despite the fact she had lost her sole source of income and, recently, her son. 

“I think I was more than afforded the option to do a hardship at this time,” she told The Richmonder. “It would have taken the stress off the entire situation because I would have had the room to do what I needed to do.” 

“That’s actually what I was going through, a hardship,” she continued. 

With no income, Coleman relied on her mother to make the $50 monthly payments. 

“Ms. Coleman qualified for the Hardship Exemption. RRHA knew that Ms. Coleman qualified for a Hardship Exemption,” the lawsuit contends. “But RRHA did not ‘immediately grant an exemption’ from the minimum rent as it was required to do.” 

James, who lived in Whitcomb Court between December 2022 and May 2024, also says in the lawsuit that she was not offered the hardship exemption even when she faced financial strain due to the costs of addressing mold and broken air conditioning problems. James was already paying the $50 minimum rent because her child had medical needs requiring full-time care that precluded her from getting a job. 

“No resident I ever knew was talked to about” the hardship exemption, said Coleman. 

RRHA mentions the hardship exemption in its standard lease agreement, as well as on one page of its 342-page Admissions and Continued Occupancy Policy, a document that federal law requires all public housing authorities to craft. 

But, the lawsuit argues, RRHA “does not notify tenants of their right to the Hardship Exemption in any way reasonably calculated to actually inform them of the right to request an exemption.” 

Coleman and James contend the authority includes no mention of the option in rent recertification paperwork, income worksheets, lease termination notices or rent notices. Nor, they say, does RRHA provide information to residents about what process they can follow to request the exemption. 

They are asking the court to not only order the authority to begin complying with federal hardship exemption rules but also recalculate the rent of all tenants who have been placed on the $50 minimum rent over the past five years and correct any relevant debt or eviction-related money judgments related to nonpayment of rent. 

Additionally, they request that RRHA be forbidden from evicting public housing residents for nonpayment of minimum rent until the authority “comes into compliance with the law” and “corrects past unlawful actions.” 

Richmond’s public housing authority, which is the largest in Virginia, with over 10,000 residents and more than 3,000 units under its management, isn’t the only body to come under fire over the hardship exemption in recent years. A similar class action case was filed against the Omaha Housing Authority in Nebraska last summer, while the Chicago Housing Authority settled a lawsuit on the issue in 2022. 

Contact Reporter Sarah Vogelsong at svogelsong@richmonder.org

This story has been corrected to note that Coleman's disability payments were suspended in December 2023, not December 2024.