Almost lost in a news cycle that has been dominated by the Republican primaries and the terribly tragic events in Sanford, Florida was mention that the Congress may not reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), due to expire in the near future.
It isn’t my place, nor the focus of this column, to comment on the politics that accompany the issue of reauthorization. I’ll leave that to the pundits on the airwaves, print media, and blogosphere. That said, I do want to comment from the perspective of housing management.
For those who have come in to this story in the middle, HUD’s rulemaking on the Violence Against Women Act (and despite its name, the law protects people regardless of gender) has focused on the bifurcation of a lease agreement in order to permit a housing provider to evict only the alleged perpetrator of dating violence, domestic violence, or stalking, while keeping the remainder of the household in place. Due process concerns were served by the fact that eviction actions, of necessity, involve due process. In keeping with the law, HUD’s rulemaking extended only to Public Housing Authorities and the Section 8 programs.
Housing providers, to comply with the law, used HUD mandated lease addenda and developed policies, practices and procedures to implement the law’s requirements — including a very strict imposition of confidentiality to further protect alleged victims of domestic violence.
So, if VAWA does not get reauthorized, do all of these measures fall by the wayside?
If I were to bet, and I am the furthest thing from a gambler because the compliance mindset doesn’t involve much risk-taking, my money would be on HUD finding a way to keep VAWA even if the law isn’t reauthorized. Specifically, I can see the Department acting in a manner similar to its promulgation of regulations on equal access in HUD programs regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity. There was likely no way that these provisions would have been adopted by Congress to amend the US Civil Rights Act of 1968 and make sexual orientation or gender identity a protected class under the Fair Housing Act. So HUD made it a program rule.
If HUD takes a similar action on VAWA which, in my view, they can do relying on nothing more than the existing regulation requiring that HUD housing programs be “safe, decent and sanitary,” they can extend such a rule beyond the existing law and make VAWA’s central provisions applicable to HUD programs beyond PHA’s and Section 8, such as Section 236, Section 202, et al.
Time will tell if I am right.