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NYC’s ‘Hollowed Out’ Enforcement Units Struggle to Keep Pace on Housing Discrimination Cases

14 Comments

  • nyc101
    Posted June 1, 2021 at 10:28 am

    No sane landlord wants a ‘voucher’ or Section-8 tenant. Such tenants are the worst most destructive renters. How can it be legal to force a landlord to take part in a voluntary program?

    • blep
      Posted June 1, 2021 at 1:21 pm

      You’re a bad person

      • Tammie
        Posted February 26, 2023 at 12:35 pm

        You sound crazy, like some cash paying tenants are perfect. Some of them don’t pay their rent and are destructive as well.

    • Henry
      Posted June 2, 2021 at 8:44 am
    • HASA 718
      Posted June 4, 2021 at 8:42 am

      That is a terrible mindset. While some voucher tenants, ultimately are unsuitable for living independently and unfortunately landlords must bear the cost, it doesn’t mean that an entire group of people should be excluded. individualized assessments should be performed.

      Lack of sufficient funds to pay rent only has a small correlation with someone’s social behavior, education, employment status, and moral fitness.

  • NYC102
    Posted June 1, 2021 at 1:36 pm

    When the vouchers are enough above the market rents to cover the wear and tear, the difficulty of collecting the tenant share, the inspections, the fact that a tenant can trash the apartment and have it removed from the subsidy list etc., LLs will happily accept section 8 vouchers. Some LLs will probably specialize in Section 8, because it is a real pain to have 9 market rate and 1 section 8 tenant.

    But as long as the housing advocates expect LLs to do a ton of administrative and social work, essentially for free, these voucher holders are going to be last on everyone’s list of prospective tenants.

  • Jagots
    Posted June 1, 2021 at 4:01 pm

    It’s not the tenants, it’s the program itself that is the problem. More specifically the endless harassment by agencies. The annual inspections are an extortion scheme.

    You can’t have it both ways: don’t say “you have to accept Section 8 tenants” and then say “Now we’re going to police the hell out of you because there’s a section 8 tenant”.

    I’m not talking about violations for major stuff here like no heat or hw. I’m talking about violations for things like “failure to keep a lead paint inspection log” … administrative harassment. The hallway got repainted last week, you’re giving me a ticket for not having that in a log? Because the super didn’t make the entries? Does anyone not realize how extensive and co pletely wasteful the administrative overburden is in NYC? And how drastically that escalates as soon as there’s a program tenant of any kind?

    This is NYC: the administrative police state. There’s no wonder why an LL doesn’t want section 8 tenants … and it’s got little to do with the tenants themselves.

    “We don’t take programs” is about the program itself, not the renters.

    • black tulip
      Posted June 3, 2021 at 10:36 pm

      I am curious if you would be more willing to accept someone whose main source of income included something like a Universal Basic Income payment, if UBI was only given to very low income people.

      • NYC-UWS
        Posted October 19, 2022 at 10:34 am

        Landlords are happy to accept anyone who can reliably pay rent. The issue is the administrative headaches of the section 8 program. Having just one section 8 tenant can consume literally hundreds of hours of the landlord’s time to comply with the minutiae of the program. For example you get a violation for not showing the inspector the building basement, when the inspector never asked to see the basement. HPD stops payments and even claws back prior payments (just sweeps them from your bank account) because they don’t like how your name is spelled in their database, even though they are the ones that entered it into their own database that way. You have to apply months in advance for approval of rent increases, which is the same rent increase for the entire building, and you follow all the directions and submit all the listed required paperwork, and HPD sits on it and then tells you at the 11th hour that they can’t process it because you did not submit a document that is not even listed, and they won’t accept the missing document but instead require you to resubmit the entire package. The tenant moves out and sublets to multiple random people while still collecting the section 8 assistance (making $$$ from their subsidy), and when the landlord notifies HPD, HPD takes years to investigate then terminates the subsidy but allows the tenant to appeal so it takes years more to get the apartment empty and rerented to legal occupants. I could go on. CityLimits should investigate how HPD contributes to the affordable housing crisis.

  • Verniece
    Posted June 1, 2021 at 9:14 pm

    Hello my name is Verniece I am a 32yr old female with a baby on the way who was in a shelter due to domestic violence I have a cityfeps voucher and have been turned down time after time because no one wants to accept my voucher housing has me in a waiting list for N4 when I should be N1 because of my situation the system is all messed up. I also was punched in the back on the 34st train station platform by a homeless man who nearly made me stumble into the track it’s sad that we have no help at all out here and everything that’s supposed to be affordable is definitely not..

  • Nyc102
    Posted June 2, 2021 at 7:23 am

    Talk to landlords that do take the vouchers, they sometimes hold the apartment for 3 months only to be denied approval by sec 8 or other city agencies because of bureaucracy with no recourse for lost rent.

  • HASA718
    Posted June 3, 2021 at 4:05 pm

    I am a 35 year old male with a criminal history (1 felony from 2005) and used a HASA voucher. I was and currently am employed and happily married. I inquired about many apartments and was ghosted either because of source of income and/or criminal history. Then I learned of Human Rights commission. When I got ghosted, I contacted Human Rights commission who then informed a potential landlord about the illegality of what they were doing regarding Source of income discrimination. They also reminded the landlord of the 2016 HUD guidelines concerning criminal convictions because of course a landlord has the right to keep his property and tenants safe. There was a lot of back and forth between the landlord, landlord’s lawyers, lawyers from the Human Rights Commission and people from HRA/HASA until finally after many months, I was given the apartment. To the landlord’s credit, he held the apartment for all of those months. I have always paid my rent on time and myself and my spouse treat the apartment great. I have never had a problem with the landlord or vice-versa after that. The point is landlords should not automatically ban people with vouchers and/or criminal history. There should be an individualized assessment. If someone is going to be a bad tenant, it will show itself. The other point is that a prospective tenant should not have to navigate through so many bureaucracies to just be considered for an apartment.

  • Chris
    Posted December 4, 2021 at 3:56 am

    Landlords dont like programs because the state wont allow them to run slums. Simple as that. The “low life tenant” stereotype is simply projection

  • Dawn Falkenheimer
    Posted June 16, 2022 at 3:59 pm

    My Name is Dawn. F
    I am Living at the same address for 27 years. I have to Move out because it is under new
    Management. I Live in Brooklyn N.Y. I filled out Applications. Went and seen apartments.
    All I am looking for is a one or two bedroom apartment. Yes I have a Section 8 Voucher. I have searched for 2 1/2 years and still searching. I am a Good Tenant. I have Two Separate
    Letters from both Landlords I am to myself. I am very clean. I really need help to find a new place. some these Landlords are being a little to picky. I understand you have some people
    that are picky. But not everyone is dirty and Nasty. I never had to ask any Landlord to fix anything. I fixed it myself and paid for it myself. there are no hose in my walls or floors. I paint the apartment myself. That’s why said I am a clean person. I don’t bother no one.
    I pay my own light -gas – and heat. All I need is a little help.

    Thank You

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