Court Opinion

ID: 9473311
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:26:09.272605+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:27.002291
License: Public Domain

POSNER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join Judge Flaum’s opinion without reservations, and write separately only to indicate my doubts concerning the soundness of United States v. Winthrop Towers, 628 F.2d 1028, 1034-35 (7th Cir.1980), which held that a mortgagor can set up, as an affirmative defense to foreclosure by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department’s failure to comply with the statement of national housing objectives in 42 U.S.C. § 1441. This holding was followed in United States v. Victory Highway Village, Inc., 662 F.2d 488, 494 (8th Cir.1981), but without discussion; I can find no other appellate case on the question.
Section 1441 provides as follows (I cannot make my point without setting forth the statute in full, lengthy as it is):
The Congress declares that the general welfare and security of the Nation and the health and living standards of its people require housing production and related community development sufficient to remedy the serious housing shortage, the elimination of substandard and other inadequate housing through the clearance of slums and blighted areas, and the realization as soon as feasible of the goal of a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family, thus contributing to the development and redevelopment of communities and to the advancement of the growth, wealth, and security of the Nation. The Congress further declares that such production is necessary to enable the housing industry to make its full contribution toward an economy of maximum employment, production, and purchasing power. The policy to be followed in attaining the national housing objective established shall be: (1) private enterprise shall be encouraged to serve as large a part of the total need as it can; (2) governmental assistance shall be utilized where feasible to enable private enterprise to serve more of the total need; (3) appropriate local public bodies shall be encouraged and assisted to undertake positive programs of encouraging and assisting the development of well-planned, integrated residential neighborhoods, the development and redevelopment of communities, and the production, at lower costs, of housing of sound standards of design, construction, livability, and size for adequate family life; (4) governmental assistance to eliminate substandard and other inadequate housing though the clearance of slums and blighted areas, to facilitate community development and redevelopment, and to provide adequate housing for urban and rural nonfarm families with incomes so low that they are not being decently housed in new or existing housing shall be extended to those localities which estimate their own needs and demonstrate that these needs are not being met through reliance solely upon private enterprise, and without such aid; and (5) governmental assistance for decent, safe, and sanitary farm dwellings and related facilities shall be extended where the farm owner demonstrates that he lacks sufficient resources to provide such housing on his own account and is unable to secure necessary credit for such housing from other sources on terms and conditions which he could reasonably be expected to fulfill. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, and any other departments or agencies of the Federal Government having powers, functions, or duties with respect to housing, shall exercise their powers, functions, and duties under this or any other law, consistently with the national housing policy declared by this Act and in such manner as will facilitate sustained progress in attaining the national housing objective hereby established, and in such manner as will encourage and assist (1) the production of housing of sound standards of design, construction, livability, and size for adequate family life; (2) the reduction of the costs of housing without sacrifice of such sound standards; (3) the use of new designs, materials, techniques, and methods in residential construction, the use of *1167standardized dimensions and methods of assembly of home-building materials and equipment, and the increase of efficiency in residential construction and maintenance; (4) the development of well-planned, integrated, residential neighborhoods and the development and redevelopment of communities; and (5) the stabilization of the housing industry at a high annual volume of residential construction.
In this protracted recital of hopes and homilies, one finds few specifics (except about farms), and none that bear on foreclosure or could provide any guidance for a court called on to review a decision to foreclose. I think Congress would be surprised and dismayed to discover that by trying to give guidance of the most general sort — inspiration would be a better word — to HUD, it had made it harder for HUD to foreclose on delinquent mortgages, by giving mortgagors an argument with which to delay and very occasionally defeat foreclosure or at least make the process of foreclosure more costly. This is not to say, of course, that a HUD mortgagor should have no defenses in foreclosure actions; he should and does; but I do not think that one of them is that HUD violated section 1441 by instituting foreclosure proceedings when it did rather than giving him more time.
The court in Wintkrop Towers emphasized the “very broad discretion” that section 1441 allows HUD — “the highly discretionary nature of the decisions HUD must make in the course of administering loans,” 628 F.2d at 1036, but drew back from concluding that the agency’s exercise of discretion was unreviewable. I would have taken the additional step. I do not know what constructive contribution this or any other court can make to the achievement of the nation’s housing goals by reviewing HUD’s decision to foreclose for conformity with the generalities of section 1441. There is no definite standard for a reviewing court to apply, and, given the lack of such a standard, little likelihood that a responsible reviewing court will ever invalidate, under section 1441, a decision to foreclose. All that judicial review can do in this setting is delay foreclosure and thereby complicate HUD’s already daunting mission. If ever there was a case where judicial review was unavailable because “agency action is committed to agency discretion by law,” 5 U.S.C. § 701(a)(2), which is an exception to the presumption of judicial reviewability designed precisely for cases where “statutes are drawn in such broad terms that in a given case there is no law to apply,” S.Rep. No. 752, 79th Cong., 1st Sess. 26 (1945); Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe, 401 U.S. 402, 410, 91 S.Ct. 814, 820, 28 L.Ed.2d 136 (1971), this is the case.
An unbroken line of cases holds that decisions by federal housing authorities to raise (or authorize the raising of) rents for publicly owned or assisted housing are not reviewable for conformity with the aspirations of the National Housing Act, and notes among other things the delays that judicial review would create. See, e.g., Frakes v. Pierce, 700 F.2d 501, 503-06 (9th Cir.1983); Falzarano v. United States, 607 F.2d 506, 512-13 (1st Cir.1979); Langevin v. Chenango Court, Inc., 447 F.2d 296, 302-04 (2d Cir.1971) (Friendly, C.J.); Hahn v. Gottlieb, 430 F.2d 1243, 1249-51 (1st Cir.1970). The decision to foreclose on a commercial mortgage rather than give the mortgagor more time, like the decision how much rent to charge for an apartment, is a managerial and business rather than legal judgment. It has to be made and implemented quickly in order to be effective, and courts can do little to improve it — especially when evaluating it under as formless a mandate as section 1441, a statute that does not refer to foreclosure and, as far as I can see, is not relevant to it.