Opinion ID: 4561573
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Plaintiff’s Circumstances

Text: Plaintiff Kerrie Reilly and her adult daughter, K.R., live together in a three-bedroom apartment in Marin County. Due to a severe developmental disability, K.R. requires around-the-clock supervision. Under the In-Home Supportive Services program (IHSS; Welf. & Inst. Code, § 12300 et seq.), the state pays plaintiff to provide full-time home care and supervision to her daughter. Without such care, K.R. would likely be placed in an institution. At the time of the trial court proceedings, the family’s annual income exceeded $52,000, comprised of K.R.’s social security benefits of $11,000 and more than $41,000 in IHSS compensation to plaintiff. Plaintiff is a long-time participant in Section 8. In 2004, plaintiff’s second daughter, R.R., moved from the family’s apartment to attend college. For the next five years, plaintiff falsely represented in annual, sworn certifications to the Marin Housing Authority (Authority), the agency responsible for administering her Section 8 benefits, that 3 REILLY v. MARIN HOUSING AUTHORITY Cantil-Sakauye, C. J., dissenting R.R. continued to live with her.2 After the Authority learned the truth, plaintiff admitted that she made the misrepresentations because she was concerned that she and K.R. would be required to move from their three-bedroom apartment if she disclosed R.R.’s move. Plaintiff’s false representations also caused her to be granted, the Authority concluded, a larger Section 8 housing voucher than she would have received had the Authority known the true circumstances. When the Authority confronted plaintiff, she agreed to repay more than $16,000 in excess subsidies under a payment schedule. Unfortunately, plaintiff was often unable to make the scheduled payments. The Authority’s patience ran out in 2015, when it terminated her participation in the Section 8 program. As the Authority informed the trial court in explaining its decision to terminate plaintiff, its implementation of Section 8 is severely constrained by limited funding. In 2015, more than 5,000 families in Marin County eligible for Section 8 housing assistance were on a waiting list because the Authority was unable to help them. At the time, the Authority was authorized to grant vouchers to only 2,153 families; in practice, it provided rent vouchers only to 1,957 2 The majority’s statement that plaintiff “did not inform” the Authority of R.R.’s departure (maj. opn., ante, at p. 2) is a charitable but misleading characterization of plaintiff’s repeated and knowing falsehoods. 4 REILLY v. MARIN HOUSING AUTHORITY Cantil-Sakauye, C. J., dissenting families due to insufficient funding. The Authority decided to terminate plaintiff because, it explained, although it “has been grappling with the possibility of terminating hundreds of compliant families from the Section 8 Program, [plaintiff] has made it a practice to violate rules of the Section 8 Program and her contractual obligations.” Contrary to majority’s claim (maj. opn., ante, at p. 2), the termination did not require plaintiff’s eviction from her apartment, although she would become responsible for paying the entire rent. In this mandate action challenging her termination, plaintiff argued that the Authority had improperly included her IHSS payments when calculating her annual income under Section 8, causing the Authority to understate the housing subsidy due her. The trial court disagreed, sustaining the Authority’s demurrer without leave to amend upon concluding that the IHSS payments were properly included in plaintiff’s income calculation. The Court of Appeal affirmed in a published decision. (Reilly v. Marin Housing Authority (2018) 23 Cal.App.5th 425, 439 (Reilly).) The Supreme Court now reverses the Court of Appeal.