| Court: | Federal Court of Appeals (Indiana) |
| Facts: | HUD owns a building, after Riverhouse defaults. It needed too many repairs, so they want the people out. It gives security deposits back to anyone who was current on rent, and applied the deposits to the rent of anyone who was not current. These folks want relocation benefits. |
| Posture: | Initially there's some litigation as Riverhouse defaults. Then later HUD is service notices to quit the premises to all the tenants. Then we've got the suit filed by the plaintiffs. |
| Issue: | Should these tenants get relocation benefits? |
| Holding: | No. |
| Rule: | An order to vacate a public housing project because it has failed is not itself a program or project "for the benefit of the public as a whole." |
| Reasoning: | The statute says if you're displaced by a federal program, you get benefits. But there's no implied warranty of habitability in a failed public housing program: that would amount to a guarantee that it would succeed, and the legislature never said any such thing. The establishment of an objective is not a warranty that it will be attained. |
| Dicta: | |