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LOS ANGELES — California tenants who held Part 8 housing vouchers have been refused rental contracts by greater than 200 landlords, together with main actual property corporations, in line with an undercover investigation that discovered widespread discrimination within the state.
The investigative nonprofit Housing Rights Initiative introduced Tuesday that it has filed complaints with the California Civil Rights Division, alleging landlords violated a state legislation in opposition to denying leases to renters who pay with vouchers. It seeks penalties in opposition to 203 corporations and people.
“This historic filing serves as an opportunity for the Governor and his housing enforcement agency to enforce the very bill he signed into law and hold violators accountable,” the Housing Rights Initiative mentioned in a press release.
The objective of the Part 8 program, named for a part of the federal Housing Act, is to maintain rental properties inexpensive and forestall homelessness, which has reached disaster ranges in California. Beneath this system, which has an extended ready record, tenants usually pay about 30% of their revenue on lease, with the voucher overlaying the remainder.
Over the course of a 12 months, undercover investigators posing as potential tenants reached out through textual content messages to landlords, property managers and actual property brokers to find out compliance with California’s honest housing legal guidelines. The investigation discovered voucher holders have been explicitly discriminated in opposition to 44% of the time in San Francisco. Voucher denials occurred in 53% of circumstances in Oakland, 58% in San Jose, and 70% in Los Angeles.
In a single textual content message alternate, an agent with EXP Realty, a nationwide brokerage agency, tells an investigator posing as a potential tenant that utilities are included within the month-to-month fee for a rental unit. When knowledgeable that the tenant has a Part 8 voucher, the agent responds, “I don’t work with that program,” in line with the investigation.
Kate Liggett, program director of Housing Rights Initiative, estimates the submitting represents only a fraction of discrimination in opposition to Part 8 tenants in California.
“By exposing this widespread and harmful practice, we call on the State to provide agencies like the California Civil Rights Department with the resources they need to eradicate voucher discrimination once and for all,” Liggett mentioned in a press release.
