Finding a home even with a Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) is hard.
The search requires sifting through advertisements, making numerous calls, and facing frequent rejection, with many landlords refusing to accept vouchers, reveals a new Urban Institute study, the most comprehensive test of voucher discrimination to date.
The HCV program, formerly known as Sec. 8, is the federal government’s largest rental housing assistance program, serving more than 2.2 million families. Just obtaining a voucher can be difficult, with only about 21% of the estimated 22 million low-income households eligible for assistance receiving one.
Voucher households contribute 30% of their adjusted income toward rent, with the voucher covering the remainder of the rent up to a rent cap. Program participants can, in theory, move anywhere in the country where a public housing authority (PHA) administers the program, but their housing choices are severely constrained by their ability to navigate the private rental market, find a unit with rent below the payment standard, and identify a landlord who will participate in the program. Landlords decide, for the most part, if they want to accept vouchers as payment for their rental units, according to the report.
As a result, apartment operators play a critical role in the HCV program.Sponsored by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the new study examines landlord treatment of people with vouchers in five cities—Fort Worth, Texas; Los Angeles; Newark, N.J.; Philadelphia; and Washington, D.C.
There was clear evidence of outright denial of vouchers, report researchers. Denial rates were highest in Fort Worth (78%), Los Angeles (76%), and Philadelphia (67%). Rates were lower in Newark (31%) and Washington, D.C. (15%), where voucher holders are a protected class under local anti-discrimination laws.
Landlords were more likely to deny voucher holders in low-poverty areas compared with high-poverty areas, particularly in the sites with the highest voucher denial rates.
“The difficulty finding landlords who will accept vouchers, particularly in low-poverty areas, likely increases the cost and duration of voucher housing searches, limits voucher holders’ housing and neighborhood options, and increases costs to local PHAs and HUD,” say researchers.
The report offers several policy and program changes to encourage landlord participation, including pursuing legal protections for voucher holders and encouraging landlord participation through recruitment strategies and incentive programs.
For more information, read A Pilot Study of Landlord Acceptance of Housing Choice Vouchers.
In addition, the Urban Institute has a blog post that focuses on the study’s findings for Washington, D.C.
