As 2024 comes to a close, we pause to celebrate a special milestone for our firm of Eckland & Blando: it has now been 20 years since the issuance of the landmark trial court decision in Franconia Associates v. United States. That decision vindicated our clients’ right to obtain justice for the federal Government’s repudiation of their contracts related to the Section 515 affordable housing program. The Franconia decision laid the foundation for a unique settlement process in which thousands of other housing owners across the country have been able to partake, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in settlement payments to our clients in the years since the decision came down.
Our story goes back to the 1960s, with the Government’s enactment of the Section 515 Program that offered an attractive deal for prospective property owners to partner with the Department of Agriculture in providing affordable housing in rural areas of the country. In exchange for developing and then owning and/or managing low-income housing projects, property owners were promised the right to prepay their mortgages and exit the Section 515 Program at a time of their choosing to earn much higher market-rate rents. But in an attempt to stem the loss of low-income housing through the aptly-named Emergency Low-Income Housing Preservation Act (ELIHPA), Congress broke the Government’s promise to these property owners by permanently restricting their ability to terminate their participation in the Program.
Eckland & Blando’s founders, Jeff Eckland and Mark Blando, fought tirelessly for years to enforce their Section 515 clients’ rights and hold the Government to its promise. The Supreme Court of the United States, in its seminal Franconia Associates v. United States decision, ultimately vindicated what our founders knew to be true: that under the circumstances of our case, the Government, just like any private party, must keep its promises – even those broken by an Act of Congress.
After the unanimous, 9-0 Supreme Court victory in 2002 and a two-week long trial held in Des Moines, Iowa during 2003, the late Judge Allegra of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims issued a colorful 50-page opinion in 2004 that aptly invoked the iconic song “Hotel California” by The Eagles to characterize the Government’s actions in abrogating our client’s ability to leave the Section 515 Program: “You can check [in] any time you like, but you can never leave.” That opinion also served as the framework for an exclusive administrative settlement process with the Government that has continued to this day. Eckland & Blando has now recovered a total of nearly $900 million in damages for more than 2,000 Section 515 properties across the country over the past twenty years.
We want to thank all of our clients, partners, and supporters, who have been integral to our success. Here’s to continuing our fight for justice and holding the Government accountable for its promises for years to come.