Comic Strip Government

I stay at large rooming house with 50 or so rooms, recently I received a File Closure Notice that indicated that due to not having responded to an interest letter I was removed from the Public Housing waiting list, apparently I was also removed from another waiting list previous to this, on top of that I did not receive a Jury Summons (first) but did get the second and probably some junk, I do have an ID locking service with a guarantee but I'm not going to bother with a PO Box, a bunch of missing and or stolen mail exactly meets my expectation of a place such as this. The best part here is our government's handling of this thus far (read below).

Informal Hearing Request E-Mail Response:

"Good Morning!

The Houston Housing Authority acknowledges receipt of your request.
Our records indicate that the Interest Letter was mailed to Citizen
Doe at Citizen Doe's house. This is the same address as verified by
you during several calls made to the HHA. Since the letter was not
returned to the HHA as undeliverable, it was perceived as received.
Since we did not receive a response by the due date, the file was
closed from the X Waiting List on X/XX/XXXX and Public Housing Waiting
List on X X, XXXX.

Since it has been determined that no clerical nor administrative errors
incurred in the sending the Interest Letter or the Closed File notice
to the correct address, the HHA is unable to reverse this action. As a
result, we are unable to re-instate you on the Waiting List for X or
Public Housing.Unfortunately, removal from the waiting list is
ineligible to be appealed nor grieved.

Please monitor our website for future announcements regarding the re-
opening of our waiting list(s).

Thank you for the opportunity to address your concern."

Also, the actual documentation I received from HHA did not include appeal information of any sort other than to say that I did not have the right to an Informal Hearing on this matter, in fact the absence of information on remedial measures is inappropriate and I would hope that it is in violation of some established rule or procedure with any sort of denial whatsoever. This HHA is one of the lowest ranked in the nation and was so mismanaged that they were actually forced to rescind vouchers, I would be surprised if the incompetents who manage to function there did not have a hand in this situation of mine.

How should I proceed to correct this issue?

"I do have an ID locking service with a guarantee but I'm not going to bother with a PO Box"

I suggest you "bother" with a PO Box if you want to make sure you get mail that is addressed to you when you live in a 50 room "large boarding house" especially since you admit you expect mail to be stolen. There is no way the HHA could possibly be held liable for this. And no they don't have to let you appeal unless you can somehow prove it is their mistake, which you admit it is not.

Alan Kund said:

How should I proceed to correct this issue?

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Get a PO box.

Otherwise your mail problems are on you.

Happily those two are just back ups themselves but the notion that someone could spend 5 or 10 years on a waiting list and then miss a single piece of mail and this results in termination is ludicrous and it's bad policy gentlemen, regardless of how you evidently feel about the social net.

Yes, it's ludicrous. But it's bureaucracy and the bureaucrats make the rules no matter how draconian they are.

As for your mail: Self preservation is nobody's business but your own.

Alan Kund said:

Happily those two are just back ups themselves but the notion that someone could spend 5 or 10 years on a waiting list and then miss a single piece of mail and this results in termination is ludicrous and it's bad policy gentlemen, regardless of how you evidently feel about the social net.

Click to expand...

Exactly how many times do you feel like they should try to contact you? In the end, there are rules. May be bad policy (and I never expressed any feeling about "the social net" and I am not a gentleman) but at some point there have to be boundaries and rules or that social net would not be able to function.

Forgive me, man of wealth and taste, but they should be required to send a letter, to SMS text and to email a waiting list participant no less than 3 times on what must be at least 2 but probably 3 action letters. Of course there should be what might be called large unit poor houses where people can go provided they meet some kind of escalating set of education requirements while they stay there and this assistance is taken out of their taxes which are hiked when they do work and this should largely replace the system we have.

As for the other advice, I might as well get one, it seems most people should.

And if you had taken the elementary, and inexpensive, option of getting a post office box when you KNEW there was an issue with lost mail without one, it wouldn't have happened. The responsibility is yours.