Housing vouchers solve, cp causes landlords to say yes

One way to improve the situation is straightforward enough: better enforcement of source-of-income laws. Some cities are starting to take a more active role in this. For example, the NYC Department of Social Services has brought several lawsuits against large landlords for voucher discrimination. In 2018, NYC’s Commission for Human Rights formed a new unit to help fight income discrimination, and has since received over 800 complaints from voucher holders. The unit files formal complaints against landlords; its director, Stephanie Rudolph, said another top priority is intervening quickly, enabling voucher holders to move into buildings that had initially ignored them or turned them away. (Advocates in New York City who have praised the work of CCHR are pushing the city to provide greater funding for the unit, which currently has only five members.) Another key part of improving voucher programs is assisting voucher holders in their search and documenting discrimination, said Annie Carforo, campaign manager at Neighbors Together, a nonprofit organization that assists low-income New Yorkers. Carforo has talked to hundreds of people — many of them living in city shelters — who struggle to find apartments that will accept their vouchers and who have been given little, if any, assistance in their search. In some cases, people are unaware of the laws prohibiting voucher discrimination. “It’s heartbreaking to meet people who have been looking for housing for two years [using vouchers], and who never knew it was illegal for landlords to treat them this way,” Carforo said. Investing in a greater level of assistance for voucher holders is also a major component of Creating Moves to Opportunity, an initiative in Seattle and surrounding suburbs that helps families with housing choice vouchers relocate to high-opportunity neighborhoods. As Dylan Matthews recently reported for Vox, a randomized study of the program found big results: 54 percent of families in the treatment group that received counseling moved to a high-opportunity area, compared with 14 percent of families in the control group (which had received vouchers only). In some areas, improving the voucher system could also involve improving the voucher-acceptance process for landlords. Landlords in some cities have pushed back on source-of-income laws, and a recent qualitative study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University showed that some landlords are worried about losing money if they accept vouchers, due to inspections and other kinds of administrative delays. The researchers suggest that making the process more efficient could help address landlord concerns. Another approach may be increasing landlord incentives, such as bonuses and tax breaks, which a few states and cities already offer. In addition, the Urban Institute recommends greater investment in actively recruiting landlords to participate in voucher programs, particularly in low-poverty neighborhoods. The vouchers themselves could use improvements, too. In some cases, the lack of housing choice may be caused in part by voucher amounts that are not properly calibrated to local rents. Voucher amounts have typically been set by median rents in a large area (such as a metro area), but in recent years, there’s been a shift toward calculating median rents within smaller geographic areas (such as zip codes). Following a lawsuit, Dallas was the first to try this approach, which led to a greater use of vouchers in low-poverty neighborhoods. After studying the approach in five other pilot areas, HUD shifted to the new way of calculating median rent (called “small area fair market rent”) for 24 metro areas, and other housing agencies can decide to make the change voluntarily. (Though promising, it’s still too early to tell how much this policy shift will help increase mobility on a larger scale.)