October 8, 2024
A national investigative nonprofit on Monday lodged discrimination complaints against more than 200 California landlords and their representatives — including major real estate brokerages — alleging they illegally refused to rent to Section 8 voucher holders.
The Housing Rights Initiative filed the complaints, based upon an undercover investigation, with the California Civil Rights Department.
The nonprofit organization is asking the agency to look into penalties against the 203 companies and individuals, saying they violated a state law that makes it illegal to deny tenants solely because they’d pay with a voucher. It’s also lobbying for more state funding to adequately enforce the law, which the group and other advocates contend hasn’t been done since the rules took effect in 2020.
“There’s nothing more tragic than when a family gets … an opportunity to get a home and they can’t because real estate isn’t following the law,” said Aaron Carr, executive director of the Housing Rights Initiative. “It’s time for California to get tough.”
The Section 8 program, named after a section of the federal Housing Act, is one of the U.S. government’s most powerful tools to keep rental housing affordable and to fight overcrowding and homelessness.
Generally, tenants pay the equivalent of about 30% of their income on rent with the voucher covering the rest. Unlike public housing, the subsidy can move with tenants so that they can find housing with private landlords. But that’s easier said than done.
Households can spend years on waiting lists just to receive a voucher. When they get one, advocates say, landlords often refuse to rent to them under the disproven belief they’re more likely to be bad tenants, which can reflect negative stereotypes of poor people, as well as people of color, who make up a majority of Section 8 participants.
Amid a long-running housing crisis, California tried to stop those denials when it joined a handful of other states and passed a “source-of-income” law that makes it illegal to discriminate against tenants who pay with Section 8 and other subsidies. Types of discrimination include refusing to rent to such tenants at all or treating them differently in other ways, such as charging them higher security deposits.
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“If people who receive Section 8 … can’t get legitimate rental units, then they’re going to be unhoused,” said Smith, whose organization, along with the law firms Cohen Milstein and Handley Farah & Anderson, is representing the Housing Rights Initiative in its state filings.
Read Housing Nonprofit Alleges Widespread Discrimination Against Section 8 Tenants in California.