In our previous blog covering the Southeast Tenant Information Organization (SETIO), the tenant group formed from residents at Cabo San Lucas apartments and the Redford apartments in Houston, we discussed tenants urging City officials, the Houston Housing Authority, and the Coalition for the Homeless to deliver justice to residents who were once on supportive housing programs and subsequently needed navigation to stable housing following multiple evictions.
Since late last year, many SETIO tenants have received a voucher for permanent housing from the Houston Housing Authority. This remarkable delivery of support in a time of urgent need ensured that after fighting so hard, many tenants were granted a new opportunity to find new, quality housing and avoid homelessness.
However, SETIO tenants have now encountered numerous obstacles along the way to actually utilizing the vouchers they were awarded. The barriers that many tenants who are able to secure a housing voucher have encountered in their housing search reveal several necessary changes that Public Housing Authorities (PHAs), the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and state and federal lawmakers must make in order to ensure that tenants who possess vouchers have a simplified and fair experience when searching for their housing
What are Vouchers?
HUD issues annual allocations of vouchers to PHAs for families and individuals with limited income, seniors, the elderly and adults living with disabilities to seek, ideally, quality housing in the private rental market. Tenants have a set amount of time after being issued a voucher to find a property of their choice, usually 3 months or 90 days. PHAs issue monthly housing subsidy payments directly to properties, with tenants covering the difference between the PHA subsidy and the market rent. The tenant portion of the rent is usually expected to cover no more than 30% of the tenant’s monthly income. Voucher programs are intended to incentivize landlords to accept voucher holding renters in their properties as an almost guaranteed rent paying tenant. Tenants PHA’s conduct routine inspections in units with a voucher holder to ensure that units are meeting federally mandated Decent, Safe and Sanitary conditions (DSS).
The most common voucher held by tenants is the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV), colloquially known as a “Section 8” voucher. However, the federal government appropriates additional funding each year for vouchers that serve special populations. We’ll briefly break down the different types of vouchers offered by HUD:
Mainstream and Non-Elderly with Disabilities (NED) Vouchers
Mainstream Vouchers and NED vouchers are intended for households with one or more non-elderly (between the ages of 18 and 62) individuals who are living with disabilities. The individual with the qualifying disability does not have to be the head of household. Families may apply to a PHA open waiting list, and then will be moved to a NED voucher or an HCV once they reach the top of the waiting list if applicable. For Mainstream vouchers, individuals may be moved off the PHA waiting list in a similar fashion, or a Mainstream voucher may be granted to individuals who are transitioning out of an institution and are at significant risk of becoming homeless. Functionally, they are administered the same as a HCV, but are distinguished as they serve a designated population.
Emergency Housing Voucher
Emergency Housing Vouchers were issued by HUD to provide a novel opportunity for regional Continuums of Care (CoC), which are networks of nonprofits and other service providers focused on reducing homelessness, to deliver more immediate aid to populations that are uniquely vulnerable for housing insecurity, or are actively facing housing insecurity. These populations may include individuals who are fleeing domestic violence, individuals who are literally homeless or at imminent risk of facing homelessness, individuals fleeing intimate partner violence, stalking or sexual assault, or individuals who were recently homeless and have a high likelihood of becoming homeless again. Through partnerships between COCs, PHAs, and Victim Service Providers, regional organizations are able to grant certain populations EHVs, through tailored supportive housing programs based on their needs. Furthermore, PHAs were granted additional service fees with their allotment of EHVs that were allowed to go to various administrative costs such as security deposits, landlord incentive fees, housing search assistance, utility assistance, and moving assistance. However, while these vouchers act functionally as HCV, their federal funding will expire in 2030 unless renewed by Congress.
HUD-VASH Voucher
The HUD-VASH voucher is a collaboration between HUD and the US Department of Veterans Affairs to assist homeless veterans, many of whom are experiencing chronic homelessness, with both permanent housing in the form of a voucher, and case management and clinical services from the VA. PHAs may register their interest with HUD, and vouchers are allocated based on self-reported interest by a local PHA, as well as geographic need and PHA performance on utilizing vouchers. Many individuals are referred to this voucher from the local VA Medical Center, in consultation with other community partners.
Family Unification Program (FUP) Voucher
The FUP voucher is intended for families whose lack of adequate housing leads to the imminent placement of the family’s child or children in foster care, or the delay in the discharge of the child or children to the family from foster care. Another population of eligible youth for a FUP voucher is youth aged 18 to 24 that have left foster care or will leave foster care within 90 days and is at risk of becoming homeless upon their departure. One unique feature of FUP vouchers is that there is no time limitation for their usage for the families. FUP vouchers issued to youth are time restricted to 3 years, unless eligible for an extension. FUP vouchers are a collaboration between PHAs and Public Child Welfare Agencies (PCWAs), who make the appropriate referral for qualifying family and youth, and provide supportive services to the transitioning youth. PHAs administer the voucher in the same manner as an HCV.
What are some common barriers that tenants encounter when searching for housing on a voucher?
Voucher worksheets are not accessible
The first barrier that tenants encounter to accessing the benefits of a voucher is the confusing nature of the voucher paperwork itself.
Tenants must decipher voucher worksheets with limited instructions that describe which ZIP codes they are eligible to live in, how much of a payment issued (partial or full) based on the ZIP code the property is located in, as well as differing payment standards based on the amount of bedrooms in the household and the size of the household, which are adjusted yearly.
The delivery of the payment standard information provided in the voucher packet could be simplified to make it more accessible to individuals encountering voucher paperwork for the first time. Furthermore, supplementary informational materials, such as an interactive chatbot on a PHA website, or video tutorials with examples of potential renting scenarios, could be provided by PHAs to minimize confusion and enhance tenant understanding of voucher paperwork.
Additionally, tenants are not given a list of properties by the Houston Housing Authority, as doing so would “infringe on their choice” in the voucher program. However, just simply being given ZIP codes and a handful of online property search engines can lead to many tenants, particularly those navigating finding voucher housing for the first time, feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choice, or confused on where they can afford to live with their voucher. Moreover, even if a property appears on an online search engine intended for affordable housing, such as the popular “affordablehousing.com,” listings are not detailed enough to guarantee that a property manager will accept a Section 8 voucher. The “Section 8” icon on the “affordablehousing.com” simply denotes the owner has experience renting to tenants with a voucher, and tenants must call each complex to ensure they will accept their voucher.
While choice is significant in the housing search process, a lack of clear direction for tenants searching for housing with a voucher for the first time makes the search process longer and more arduous, especially when time is limited when finding housing.
Source of Income Discrimination
Another significant problem that individuals searching for housing on a voucher face is despite the purported choice in where they use their voucher, many landlords will not accept or are hesitant to accept a Section 8 voucher holder due to erroneous or biased beliefs about the individual. Some landlords or property managers fear that renting to a tenant with a voucher may make their property value decrease, or have the property become “less desirable” based on harmful perceptions or generalizations of who a “voucher holding tenant” is. This can make the housing search process longer than necessary, or result in the tenant having to forfeit their voucher, in some cases pushing a tenant deeper into a state of housing insecurity.
The discrimination that voucher holding tenants face in their housing search is an issue dubbed by housing advocates as “Source of Income discrimination”. While fair housing laws protect discrimination against a renter based on their sex, national origin, race, religion, familial status or disability, source of income discrimination acts as a covert way for landlords to discriminate against these protected classes of individuals. National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) notes that source of income discrimination disproportionately impacts renters of color, renters with disabilities, elderly renters and women – which are all protected classes under Fair Housing laws. In Texas, rather than banning source of income discrimination like a growing number of states, counties and cities across the nation, expressly permits the practice in the state following the passing of a 2015 law. Additionally, voucher holders are more likely to find more quality housing, in areas that are higher opportunity and lower poverty, in a shorter time frame in jurisdictions where source of income discrimination protections exist. Protections against source of income discrimination benefit not only tenants, but also PHAs, as studies have shown higher voucher utilization rates in jurisdictions where tenants have protection against source of income discrimination.
Housing advocates must urge local, state, and federal lawmakers to pass bills or ordinances that protect voucher holders from source of income discrimination, to ensure that tenants are able to access the benefits of the voucher program to the fullest extent. Furthermore, local PHAs should explore how they can issue local guidelines and best practices through landlord and property trainings in their region to ensure fairness in renting to voucher holders.
Criminal History, Evictions on background checks present barriers to accessing housing with a voucher
Another barrier encountered by tenants searching for housing is discrimination based on items that may appear on their background check, such as a criminal history or evictions. This presents a key barrier to accessing quality housing in a quality area for voucher holding tenants, and disproportionately impacts renters of color that would be otherwise protected under fair housing laws due to the racial and ethnic disparities that exist in incarceration rates and eviction rates. Voucher holding tenants with backgrounds may be unable to find housing as quickly as other tenants with vouchers and no background, and may waste money on application fees only to get denied, extending the housing search process.
HUD issued guidelines in 2016 relating to criminal background checks due to these disparities, and reiterated them in a 2022 memo which prohibits tenants from being denied housing due to their arrest records, blanket bans on anyone with a criminal record, and conducting background checks inconsistently. The only legal denial for housing based on criminal background is if it is determined that the individual’s recent criminal record makes them “dangerous and a risk to other neighbors” based on reliable evidence, that is not “speculative or hypothetical”.
Eviction records, as we have mentioned in other Housers blogs present a significant barrier for voucher holders to access quality housing. Eviction filings can stay on a tenants background screening report for up to seven years, and even upon presenting a dismissal of the eviction, a landlord may still deny an applicant based on their eviction history. In the case of SETIO tenants, property staff have given negative tenant referrals, in what could be in an act of retaliation, adding insult to injury after a mass wave of improper evictions and instances of harassment.
While the aforementioned HUD guidelines are a critical step in the right direction to ensuring that fair housing laws are applied towards renters with a criminal background, they must be effectively enforced to ensure their intended protection is conferred. With regards to eviction history as a barrier to accessing housing on a voucher, Housing advocates must push state governments to pass procedures that allow for record sealing for certain eviction cases.
Application Fees, Security Deposits Add Expenses to Cost Burdened Households
A HCV does not assist tenants seeking housing on their voucher with application fees, security deposits, pet fees or other upfront costs that are incurred by tenants with moving. For households on fixed or extremely limited incomes, these additional costs are sometimes an insurmountable financial burden on tenants who are utilizing their voucher, causing delays in seeking stable housing, or barring them from accessing the most quality housing available due to more expensive application fees and security deposits.
In order to ensure the most equitable process of searching and applying for housing using a voucher, housing advocates should urge PHAs and the federal government to pilot programs that assists extremely low income families with paying these upfront costs as a feature of their housing voucher program. This would expedite the process of applying to quality housing using a voucher, and further incentivize landlords to accept voucher holding tenants at their property.
In the absence of government action, housing advocates should urge local nonprofits and assistance ministries to augment their current funding for security deposits and moving costs for low income households, and ensure maximum accessibility to these programs.
Looking Forward
While HUD vouchers provide a critical opportunity to renters who are low income to seek stable, quality housing in the neighborhood of their choice, there are many programmatic improvements that lawmakers, PHAs and HUD must contemplate to ensure the most streamlined experience for voucher holders, as well as equity and fairness when searching for a property. A voucher is only as good as it is able to be utilized, and considering the extensive waiting time to even obtain a voucher, barriers to utilization such as inaccessible forms, source of income discrimination, discrimination based on criminal history or eviction record and additional fees not covered by the voucher must be broken down. It is the responsibility of PHAs and HUD to ensure that their programs are the most accessible and equitable for low income renters.
Texas Housers looks forward to exploring policy solutions that foster a more fair experience in renting for voucher holders with tenant advocates and allies in coalition in the coming year. Texas Housers will serve as a watchdog group to ensure that fair housing laws are being upheld towards voucher holders, and ensuring that voucher holders are able to seek quality, affordable housing in the neighborhood of their choice.
