You lost your job, bills are piling up, and now you are losing your house. What do you do? An average of half a million Americans are homeless on any given night in the US. The government has claimed we are in the middle of a housing crisis saying, “homeownership rate has declined to 64.4 percent”( https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/232/text?format=txt). In 2019 there was a bill introduced in congress called the H.R.232 - Landlord Accountability Act of 2019 presented by representative Nydia M. Velazquez (A Democrat representing the New York 7th District, in Brooklyn), which was designed to prevent landlords from denying or discriminating against people for using Section 8 vouchers as payment for rent.
What are Section 8 vouchers? Section 8 vouchers or housing choice vouchers are given to low-income families by the government so that the family can rent or afford a home for a rate within the limits of their income. Vouchers are also not used for public housing; these are used for housed or apartments that are on the open market or else in a designated housing voucher residence (there are two types of housing choice vouchers; one for the open housing market and the other for designated properties). This program started in 1968 as part of the 1968 Civil Rights Act (the Fair Housing Act), and is run through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and serves approximately 2.2 million families. There is a controversy concerning this program related to H.R. 232; should landlords be forced to accept these housing choice vouchers, and should we even continue to assist low-income households afford housing with a voucher system like this one?
On one side you have people saying that it is wrong that landlords are able to discriminate against and deny housing choice vouchers. There are some state laws that protect some housing choice vouchers but not all of them, “1 in 3 voucher households are protected by non-discrimination laws” ( https://www.cbpp.org/research/housing/prohibiting-discrimination-against-renters-using-housing-vouchers-improves-results). That means that out of the 2.2 million families that are served only 660,000 are protected under the law in various states across the country. The argument for being against the denial of the vouchers is not limited to concerns about whether HCV-using families find places to rent, but it is also about the type of housing they can find; where and what type of housing can be bought with these vouchers with the current discriminatory laws in place? The side against denial of section 8 vouchers says “Landlords’ refusal to accept vouchers is likely a significant contributor to the fact that only 14 percent of families with children in the HCV program live in low-poverty neighborhoods” (https://www.cbpp.org/research/housing/prohibiting-discrimination-against-renters-using-housing-vouchers-improves-results). For HCV program to help low-income persons escape the social isolation of living in high-poverty neighborhoods, it must be possible for them to find landlords in more wealthy (low-poverty) areas where, so often, the schools and public facilities are better, crime rates are lower, and children will meet and befriend more peers from non-poverty households. According to advocates for the laws to ban landlord discrimination against HCV-using renters, the fact that only 14% of HCV-using households with children find places to rent outside of communities with concentrated poverty is an indictment of the current system. They also argue that this refusal to accept vouchers is part of what promotes the destructive stereotype of people with section 8 vouchers being lazy, criminals, and slobs. As landlords deny use of the vouchers in nicer neighborhoods, this forces the low-income HCV-using households into poverty-stricken ones where the prejudicial stereotype builds.
On the other side of the argument, you have those who believe that it is within a landlord’s rights to deny anyone. They bought the property, they own it, they maintain it, and they face a risk with each tenant that the tenant could damage their property, ruin the environment for other renters, or cause significant hassles for the landlord. And in the spirit of a free and open market, the seller (the landlord) should have full say in who rents and lives within the house, provided they are not discriminating against protected status identities (such as race, religion, gender, nationality, ethnicity, etc.). Being a person with a low income is not a protected status identity, since landlords must be allowed to refuse to rent to potential tenants who seem unlikely to afford the rent.
One of the biggest complaints of the Landlord Accountability Act of 2019 from the landlord side is that the bill fined landlords for not keeping apartments up to certain inspection standards. This side claims that most of the time the standards that are imposed by HUD for these apartments are unnecessary and are at the landlord’s expense to maintain the buildings to the HUDs ridiculous standard. That is, landlords are accustomed to maintaining their rental properties at levels of quality that meet local building codes and standards, but the HCV Program has much higher standards, and meeting those standards would require many landlords to significantly increase their property investments through remodeling or expensive renovations that local codes would not require. If landlords must all meet the HCV Program standards so that their properties would be acceptable for HCV-using tenants, the improvements and the cost of upkeep of building could exceed the rent from tenants, and—the landlords claim—their returns on their investments would make property ownership for rental financially unsustainable. This is a problem more often identified among landlords of more affordable housing units, as the older and cheaper-rent properties are less likely to meet HUD’s standards for the HCV program.
This side also claims that the tenants from the section 8 program are less than appealing. A New York landlord stated “Section-8 tenants are the absolute bottom of the barrel. No one wants them because they are disruptive and bring criminal activity with them. I also think the NYC law is unconstitutional. A landlord should have the right to refuse a source of income” (https://citylimits.org/2016/06/07/crackdown-on-landlords-who-rebuff-section-8/). Another said, “I have NEVER EVER HEARD nice things about renting to section 8 tenants. it’s not about discrimination for being poor; it’s about discrimination because you are a horrible tenant” (https://citylimits.org/2016/06/07/crackdown-on-landlords-who-rebuff-section-8/). In this case the argument is that they are not discriminating against poor persons, but rather they are discriminating because the section 8 voucher is a reliable signal that the tenant’s behavior while renting will be costly and vexing. This side claims that they have allowed section 8 vouchers in the past, and the tenants were rude, dirty, destructive, and brought crime into the area, so their discrimination is based on experience, rather than unfounded stereotypes.
There are forums for landlords to discuss tenants to whose HCV-program benefits, and the forums provide a mixed set of anecdotes, and these are not scientific samples that can be applied draw any conclusions, other than the conclusion that there is a wide range of reported experiences.
Chinmay J of Northern Virginia reported in the Bigger Pockets forum in 2018 in response to the query “Is Section 8 Housing as bad as people say?” the following:
You will always get two diametrically opposing views on section 8. It’s one of the most polarizing real estate conversations. I am very much for it. The county/city pays you on time.. Always..The first month might be delayed due to administrative reasons, but from then onwards its like clockwork.
I have 1 Section 8 tenant right now, whom I have vetted like anyone else. They are good people. They pay their own utilities. No issues. They stay long term unlike 1 or 2 yrs for some other tenants. Eventually, I plan on making all my properties, at least in the state of Virginia, Section 8 properties.
Also, the county/city does yearly inspections. The tenants are at the mercy of the the city/county approving them for the next year. If they are found in violation of rules like unauthorized pets, authorized guests, drugs, damage to the property, they could lose their vouchers. Once they lose the vouchers, it’s not easy to get reinstated. There is always a huge waiting period. Huge demand for housing and not enough supply.
(https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/521124-is-section-8-housing-as-bad-as-people-say)
Dawn Anastasi of Milwaukee, Wisconsin reported in the in the same forum the following:
Section 8 is just a program. It's about vetting the people, regardless of the program.
I had 3 tenants on Section 8. One worked her way off the program and she's still in my rental. The other two are pretty boring tenants, they pay their rent and take care of their units. I personally like boring tenants.
Many others had similar points in favor of Section 8. The SparkRental website gives a balanced list of the advantages and drawbacks of renting to Section 8 tenants (https://sparkrental.com/become-section-8-landlord/), with many comments echoing these posts from landlords at the bigger pockets website. YouTube videos for landlords are also, on balance, cautiously optimistic about renting to HCV-program users; for example, Clayton and Natali Morris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A5Z-gwo9IY and Jim Ingersoll https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t702mIAyj40 recommend accepting HCV program tenants, provided landlords do the same screening as they do with their other tenants, checking with previous landlords and looking up police records. In contrast, Peter Murphy of Re/Max suggests that Section 8 does not offer any benefits to landlords (https://static1.squarespace.com/static/572a39c4c6fc08512e0f088d/t/5ad78003575d1fd308310607/1524072451761/SECTION+8+FAQ.pdf). Ama of the Bronx (New York) also reports on a bad experience with Section 8, and the comments section of her post at propertydo.com is full of any posts describing HCV-tenants as “animals” with anecdotes of bad experiences:
I am a first time Section 8 landlord and my experience with Section 8 rentals was not a good one. My Section 8 tenant was supposed to move into my three bedroom apartment with her 3 children and her husband (who was not in the Section 8 program).
Within 2 months of moving in, the number of occupants in the apartment became 9 instead of 5. I asked her to rectify the situation and I even sent a complaint to the Section 8 housing authorities but to no avail.
Unfortunately I needed the rent money to pay my mortgage so I put up with it. Now their lease is up and I asked her to move out but she refused. She can't get a transfer from Section 8 because she owe me three months of rent.
Now I have to spend money and time to take her to court in order to evict her. The frustrating thing is the law is always on their side and the judge will most likely give her up to 6 months extension (of the lease).
I have learned my lesson which is "no more Section 8 tenants for me." I wish the rest of you luck.
Unfortunately, there do not seem to be any studies with good sampling that can give us confidence about the actual likelihood of HCV-using tenants being riskier propositions for landlords. And, so, the complaints by landlord interests that laws restricting their ability to reject payment in the form of HCV-program payments for low-income tenants will expose them to terrible tenants is difficult to evaluate, especially if the laws forbidding landlords from outright rejection of HCV-program tenants allows those landlords to use the same screening for such tenants as they do for those who are not using HCV-program benefits.
The H.R.232 - Landlord Accountability Act of 2019 was introduced in the House of Representatives in January of 2019. The bill never made it out of committee, and there is no record of the bill being re-introduced in the new congress that was seated in January of 2021. Representative Nydia M. Velazquez from New York was the original sponsor of this bill. She so far has proposed 163 bills in the year of 2021 as of March 11th. Since the bill was proposed in 2019 it is unlikely that she would sponsor the bill again since it did not get out of committee, and would face poor prospects in the Senate anyway. However, if you have any thoughts, questions, or concerns with this policy or any other you are encouraged to contact your local or federal officials for your region.
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