379 Pa. 566 | Pa. | 1954
Lead Opinion
Opinion by
Plaintiffs, on behalf of themselves as taxpayers and all other persons similarly affected, filed a complaint in equity to enjoin the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh from taking by eminent domain their properties located on a certain site selected by the Authority for a public housing project. An answer having been filed and hearing held, the Chancellor dismissed the complaint. Plaintiffs’ exceptions were dismissed by the court en bane, and from its final decree plaintiffs now appeal.
After considering twelve possible sites for projects the Board of the Housing Authority approved three of them, namely, the Bedford Avenue site located in the “Hill District” of the City, the Henger Hill site located in the “South Side” of the City, and the Summer Hill site located in the “North Side” of the City, the last named being the one involved in the present litigation and for which there was planned the construction of 1,984 dwelling units. The Housing Authority caused a topographical, property line and utilities survey to be conducted on this site, whereupon the plaintiffs, who are officers of a “North Side Protest Committee,” anticipating that the properties of the residents would be condemned for purposes of the project, filed their complaint seeking an injunction against the Housing Authority from taking further action in the matter.
Plaintiffs’ complaint lists a multitude of alleged illegalities in the proceedings in connection with this housing project, but they may all.be reduced to three principal charges: (1) That the Board of the Housing Authority made no proper preliminary investigations or independent survey justifying their assertion that there was a need for low-rent public housing in the City of Pittsburgh, and that the alleged need which it stated in its application for program reservation was in excess of any disclosed by competent and authoritative surveys; (2) that the selection of the Summer Hill site for a housing project was arbitrary and constituted an abuse of discretion on the part of the Authority, that a so-called “Seldom Seen” site which plaintiffs proposed would be more convenient for the
(1) There is no justification whatever for plaintiffs’ complaint that the Housing Authority proceeded in an arbitrary, capricious manner, without any real study or investigation that naturally ought to be given to so serious a project. The learned Chancellor found— and his finding was fully justified by the evidence— that in preparing the application for program reservation the Authority properly relied upon material from the 1940 census figures as requested by the Public Housing Administration and which showed over 70,000 substandard dwellings in the City, upon excerpts from a report of the Allegheny County Conference on Community Development, upon a Report of the Bureau of Building Inspection showing the number of unsafe buildings demolished and units built during the period from 1940 to 1947, upon consultations with the Pittsburgh Housing Association, upon information obtained from the Tenant Selection Office and Management Division and from members of the technical staff of the Authority, and upon consultations with members of the staff of the Public Housing Administration. Prom these sources it reached the entirely justified conclusion that there existed an acute low-rent housing shortage in the City of Pittsburgh. It may be added that the Authority also consulted various public bodies in reference to problems of water supply, sewers, playgrounds and schooling, such as the City Planning Commission, the Department of Public Works, the School Board of the City of Pittsburgh, and the Bureau of
(2) Plaintiffs claim that the Summer Hill site was a bad selection on the part of the Housing Authority because the proposed structures on that site- would allegedly interfere with presently existing zoning restrictions, the schooling, church and transportation facilities would be inadequate, and the cost of the project would be excessive. They assert that the “Seldom Seen” site, the selection of which they advocated, would have been a better choice on the alleged ground that it contained only a few' ^dilapidated' structures,'- required no grading of any consequence,' and would involve a lower cost. The “Seldom .'Seen” site is not on the “North Side” of- Pittsburgh; the .Summer Hill site, on the other hand,- is-within close proximity-of the blighted area , in that district.:-It consists of -an irregu
Plaintiffs’ complaint that the Board of the Housing Authority held no public or private hearings in connection with the selection of the site in controversy is wholly without merit. In the first place, such a hearing was afforded to plaintiffs and their counsel, who did in fact present their views. But furthermore, as far as the law is concerned, there is no requirement whatever in the applicable statutes of any such hearing to be given by the Board of the Authority. The Pennsylvania Housing Authorities Law (section 10) grants to the Authority a long enumerated list of powers including (paragraph “y”) the power “To conduct examinations and investigations and to hear testimony and take proof, under oath or affirmation, at public or private hearings, on any matter material for its information.” The power thus granted is not a mandate. There is no provision in the law as to the manner in which the Authority is to gather the information upon which to base its action, nor is there any constitutional or other legal, requirement that a landowner be granted a hearing before a governmental agency vested with the right of eminent domain determines to take his land for a public use.
(3) Admittedly the Summer Hill site was not itself a slum or blighted area and appellants apparently contend that low-rent housing can legally be constructed only upon some slum or blighted area which is being concurrently .eliminated. Such is. not the law. The Pennsylvania Housing Authorities .Law states (section 2) that “The public purposes for which such authori
It is thus clear, therefore, that neither the Pennsylvania Housing Authorities Law nor the United States Housing Act presupposes the necessary elimination of slums prior to the building of public low-rent housing or requires the building of such housing to be on the same location as that where the slum area exists. Proper planning may well dictate the placing of the housing project in a location other than the blighted area even though the latter be eliminated only subsequently by process of demolition. As was said in Dornan v. Philadelphia Housing Authority, 331 Pa. 209, 225, 200 A. 834, 842: “True, it cannot be definitely proved that those who live in the tenements to be demolished will be those who, in whole or in part, will occupy the new dwellings, but the legislation is evidently planned to accomplish that result, and whether the object will be attained or not is a matter for the judgment and responsibility of the legislature.” (See also Allydonn Realty Corporation v. Holyoke Housing Authority, 304 Mass. 288, 294, 295, 23 N.E. 2d 665, 668, 669; Keyes v. United States, 119 F. 2d 444, 447). That
The court below concluded — and we are equally of the opinion — that the actions of the Housing Authority here in issue were not arbitrary but were based upon full and adequate information and were in conformity with the Housing Laws of both the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the United States, that the competent studies made by the Housing Authority clearly revealed the need for low-rent housing in the City of Pittsburgh as stated in the Authority’s application for program reservation, that the Authority did not abuse its discretion in selecting the Summer Hill site for one of its housing projects but on the contrary selected it only after a thorough study of all available sites within the City, that there is no requirement of law that housing projects be built only in blighted areas, that the cooperation agreements between the Housing Authority and the various local taxing bodies were valid, that the construction of the proposed housing will not illegally deprive plaintiffs, or any residents of the site in question, of their property or other rights without due process of law, and that therefore the plaintiffs’ bill in equity was properly dismissed.
Decree affirmed at cost of appellants.
For example: Liggett's Petition, 291 Pa. 109, 117, 139 A. 619, 622; Campbell v. Bellevue Borough School District, 328 Pa. 197, 202, 195 A. 53, 55; Floersheim Appeal,. 348 Pa. 98, 100, 34 A. 2d. 62, 63, 64; Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board v. Henry, 361 Pa. 565, 571, 64 A. 2d 764, 767; Triolo v. Exley, 358 Pa. 555, 558, 57 A. 2d 878, 880; Reininger Zoning Case, 362 Pa. 116, 118, 66 A. 2d 225, 226; Schenck v. Pittsburgh; 364. Pa. 31, 35, 36, 70 A. 2d 612,
For example: Jarrett v. Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority, 169 F. 2d 409, 411; Matthaei v. Housing Authority of Baltimore City, 177 Md. 506, 513, 514, 9 A. 2d 835, 838; Stockus v. Boston Housing Authority, 304 Mass. 507, 509-512, 24 N.E. 2d 333, 336, 337; Brammer v. Housing Authority of Birmingham District, 239 Ala. 280, 283, 195 So. 256, 258; Chapman v. Huntington, W. Va., Housing Authority, 121 W. Va. 319, 332, 333, 3 S.E. 2d 502, 509; In re Housing Authority of City of Charlotte, 233 N.C. 649, 656, 65 S.E. 2d 761; Neufeld v. O’Dwyer, 79 N.T.S. 2d 53, 61, 62.
Dissenting Opinion
The Majority Opinion invests non-sovereign agencies with powers never intended by the founders of our Commonwealth, nor sanctioned by legislation or court decisions. It says that the “plaintiffs wholly misconceive the extent of the judicial power to review the exercise of the Authority’s discretion confided to it by the Legislature of the Commonwealth.” I do not share the Majority’s disparagement of this Court’s jurisdiction, nor is that disparagement justified by judicial precedent. In the case of White Oak Borough Authority, 372 Pa. 424, 427, we said only one year ago: “Neither Authorities nor Municipalities are sovereigns; they have no original or inherent or fundamental powers of sovereignty or of legislation; they have only the power and authority granted them by enabling-statutory legislation.” In the case of Pittsburgh v. Pa. Pub. Utility Com., 171 Pa. Superior Ct. 391, 395, the Superior Court said: “. . . administrative action cannot violate the fundamental principles of fairness any more than it can impinge on any constitutional right.”
The American Commonwealth would never have achieved its exalted state of democratic responsibility if government departments and administrative agencies were allowed unrestrainedly to reach out for the accomplishment of their assumed aims and objectives. Tyranny of power in its immediate application to a helpless victim can often be wielded more intolerantly by a minor official than by a monarch. The usurping decision of a zoning board which deprives a homeowner of the full enjoyment of his property can do more to make that freeholder unhappy than a tyrannical act of magnitude which generally affects the population. It is for that reason that practically every agency of government has been limited in the centrif
Justice Kephart, writing in White’s Appeal, 287 Pa. 259, 267, said: “All grants of power are to be interpreted in the light of the maxims of Magna Charta and . . . those things which these maxims forbid cannot be regarded as within any grant of authority made by the people to their agents: Cooley, Const. Lim. 209.” He then quoted from the eloquent statement of the Supreme Court of Texas in the case of Spann v. Dallas, 111 Tex. 350: “To secure their property was one of the great ends for which men entered into society. The right to acquire and own property, and to deal with it and use it as the owner chooses, so long as the use harms nobody, is a natural right. It does not owe its origin to constitutions. It existed before them. It is a part of the citizen’s natural'liberty — an expression of his freedom, guaranteed as inviolate by every American Bill of Rights.”
In Rolling Green Golf Club Case, 374 Pa. 450, 452, Mr. Justice Bell, speaking for this Court, said: “For centuries in England and for over 150 years in this land whose most precious heritage was liberty, an owner of land could do anything he wished with his property provided it did not interfere with his neighbor’s property or create a nuisance or violate any covenant, restriction or easement, or (in this country) violate any provision of the Federal or State Constitution. In the last quarter of a century planning commissions and zoning boards have been created and multiplied; as a result many zoning ordinances have been passed to restrict the use of property in a manner and to a degree which the planners thought would be best for that particular community.”
The elimination of slums is one of the most worthy objectives of government and it could not be better described than it has by Chief Justice Stern in the Dornan case already referred to: “Apart from the declarations in the Housing Authorities Law itself, the veriest tyro in the study of social conditions knows that the existence of slums is a menace to the health and happiness of the community in which they exist. Not only are they the focal centers of disease, and the likely sources of fires and accidents due to overcrowding, but they exert a pernicious moral influence upon those unfortunate enough to be obliged to live in them, and
In Schenck v. Pittsburgh, 364 Pa. 31, 37, Ave said: “. . . the Housing Authorities Law aimed more particularly at the elimination of undesirable dwelling houses.” It does not appear from the record in this case that the elimination of “undesirable dAvelling houses” will be the result of the proposed plan. In fact, just the contrary is indicated. The effect of the current plan is to evict people who have no reason to move, to take them from their homes which they love and cherish, and compel them to journey to other places the whereabouts of which lie someAvhere in the mysterious land of the unknown. And all this is being done in the name of slum clearance!
It is to be assumed that some slum-site not yet designated will eventually be demolished to counterbalance the catastrophe - about to be inflicted upon
A bridge that crosses a river at its only fordable location must build its abutments at certain precise places regardless of property considerations. But there is no compelling necessity for such geographical pinpointing here. The bridge of humanity which the housing legislation contemplates in this particular venture can anchor its piers in at least a dozen likely places in Pittsburgh. There were introduced in evidence in the Court beloAV pictures of one slum concentration known as Seldom Seen. This site could well be the melancholy symbolization of a slum as described in the Housing Authorities Law, to wit: “Any area in which there is a predominance of structures which, by reason of dilapidation, overcroAvding, faulty arrangement or design, lack of ventilation, light or sanitary facilities, or any combination of these factors, are detrimental to safety, health and morals.”
No one can look upon Seldom Seen without gasping in the realization that a “Tobacco- Road” of such squalor could exist within the domains of 'oné óf the most attractive, successful and progressive cities in the nation. Yet, the Tobacco Road of Pittsburgh is to remain untouched (so far as present plans are knoAvn), and its Shangri-La is doomed to the'tender ministrations of the “headache ball” and the bulldozer!
In the Dornan, case, Chief Justice Stern said that the “eradication of slum areas by the demolition of objectionable dwellings is the dominant background of the Housing Authorities Law.” (p. 227). But here the defendant Authority is making the elimination of highly desirable dwellings the dominating factor in its operation, even though it may intend later on, as I have suggested, to raze some unknown Augean stable.
If the fact that Seldom Seen is not on the North Side constitutes a valid reason (although it is not apparent why) for excluding it from the slum clearance program, that reason would still not make Summer Hill, the logical and ideal site for liquidation. What criterion was used in selecting Summer Hill for execu
Abuse of discretion on the part of an administrative board with tremendous power such as that entrusted to the defendant Authority is not a minor matter. As was stated in the case of Mielcuszny v. Rosol, 317 Pa. 91, 93: “An abuse of discretion is not merely an error of judgment, but if in reaching a conclusion the law is overridden or misapplied, or the judgment exercised is manifestly unreasonable, or the result of partiality, prejudice, bias or illwill, as shown by the evidence or the record, discretion is abused.”
I am of the opinion that the action of the defendant Authority in this case was manifestly unreason
Italics throughout, mine.