Vouching for them
In public policy, there’s the law and there’s reality. The law is that the city provides CityFHEPS housing vouchers for low-income tenants at risk of eviction, and landlords must accept them as they would any other income. The reality is that thousands of New Yorkers are illegally turned away, as laid out in a recent lawsuit by the Housing Rights Initiative.
These aren’t vague allegations. The legal complaint, filed in Manhattan state Supreme Court, details page after page of accounts of property owners and their representatives responding to HRI undercover investigators’ queries about public apartment listings by declining to accept vouchers.
In one example, a tester responded to a StreetEasy listing for a one-bedroom apartment on W. 51st St. When asked whether a voucher could be used for the unit, an employee of the brokerage allegedly responded, “no. Its [sic] rent stabilized so the landlord is looking for an excellent applicant.”
That response is not only illegal, but it betrays the shameful reason why so many tenants with vouchers have such trouble finding a place of their own: pure discrimination, the idea that because they are receiving assistance, they will somehow be problem tenants.
There is hardly any subtlety in the many examples the complaint lays out, illustrating just how blatant the violations are. That fact would surely catch the attention of the city’s enforcement unit — if there functionally were one. As of last month, the Human Rights Commission’s chronically understaffed Source of Income Unit had zero full-time staff, a fact first reported by City Limits.
While it’s commendable that HRI undertook this wide-ranging investigation on its own, it shouldn’t be on nonprofits to uncover mass violations of city law that put countless tenants at risk of homelessness. The city must devote real resources to investigate this conduct. While discrimination is rampant, landlords also validly point out that onboarding voucher tenants is a long and needlessly complicated process. Let’s make it easier on them and crack down on those who act out of prejudice.