Problems with NYC's Apartment Voucher Program

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Did you know April is Fair Housing month? This is a good month to talk about housing with Governor Hochul's plans to require towns across New York State to build more housing still being negotiated in Albany. That's one of the two big things they say is holding up the state budget after the April 1st supposed deadline. Some of you know we had planned to have a guest today, a deputy commissioner in the New York City Commission on Human Rights, about a public awareness campaign over what's called source-of-income discrimination, where landlords refuse to rent apartment to tenants whose rent is subsidized by the city or the state via vouchers.

The deputy commissioner had to cancel for a personal reason, we're told, but we're going to talk about this anyway. There's a news hook that's new. There's a new lawsuit over the city's housing voucher program and how the way the city processes the voucher renewals that the lawsuit says leaves tenants at risk of eviction. Our guest in this is our own David Brand, who covers housing for WNYC and Gothamist. He's been covering these issues for years at other news organizations before he joined us recently. David, we're so happy that you are on the WNYC Gothamist team, and welcome back to WNYC.

David Brand: Thanks a lot, Brian. It's great to be talking with you as a WNYC reporter, so it's great to be here.

Brian Lehrer: I said, "Welcome back to WNYC." I should say, "Welcome back to the show," and for the first time as a colleague after we've had you on in the past as a reporter for City Limits and as the managing editor at the Queens Daily Eagle. The New York Times reported on this lawsuit filed on behalf of these tenants by the Legal Aid Society. Those tenants have vouchers called CityFHEPS, I think I'm saying that right, which stands for City Family Homeless and Eviction Prevention Supplement. Let's note that this program with "Eviction Prevention" in the title is claimed to be putting tenants at risk of eviction. Do you understand how?

David Brand: That's the question. Just to backtrack a little bit, this program is a lifeline for thousands of families and individuals in New York City. The city's Department of Social Services says they've housed 26,000 families and individuals since 2018 with this voucher. Really important program, helps people move out of shelters into permanent housing, in apartments they probably wouldn't otherwise be able to afford because it pays the bulk of their rent, and then they pay a remainder based on their income.

More and more people are getting their vouchers just cut off. That leaves them at risk for eviction because their landlord is not getting the bulk of the rent that the voucher is supposed to pay, and it has taken some people by surprise. They say, "Well, I've been paying my portion of the rent. I thought I re-certified my voucher after the year certification period expired, and now what is this? An eviction notice?"

That's what prompted this lawsuit. It's a lawsuit filed by the Legal Aid Society on behalf of eight families and individuals who have CityFHEPS vouchers, have been in permanent housing, and now suddenly, their vouchers were cut off and they are behind on their rent and they are facing eviction.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we have time for a few phone calls on this. If you've dealt with the CityFHEPS program and want to share how it went for you or how it's going, call us at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 with our reporter, David Brand. You've reported on problems with the processing of these applications before, back in January of last year, before you joined us. Can you walk us through some of the paperwork that's involved? Which agencies get involved? What's the issue here?

David Brand: Sure. This is mostly through the Human Resources Administration, and these are vouchers for people who are in Department of Homeless Services shelters or people who are at risk of eviction, meaning they have an eviction case already filed against them, and so they can go to an HRA office or what they call a home base office and apply for this rent assistance.

There's a lot of documents that they need to compile, a lot of income verifications, a lot of identifying documents, a lot of housing history forms that they need to complete, and then there's a lot of steps and a lot of people involved. There are a lot of cooks in the kitchen, I guess you'd say. There's case managers. If you're at a shelter, there's a case manager at the home base office. There's the HRA main office. There is often a broker who's working with the client, working with the individual, and there's the landlord who's willing to accept the voucher.

There's a lot of steps and a lot of places where something can go wrong, and often what goes wrong is really mind-numbing bureaucratic details. For example, I was speaking with someone at HRA recently who shared with me an application that somebody submitted for a first-floor apartment in a three-family, two-story home. The basement apartment is a legal apartment, the first floor, the second floor.

They applied for this apartment on the first floor. Landlord accepted them, but because the basement apartment is technically apartment 1, their application was denied because they put the first-floor apartment as one instead of two. It's some of these really inane, mind-numbing issues that can cancel these applications, delay the move-in process. It's, I think, really infuriating and really disheartening to people who have these vouchers and just want to move into permanent housing.

I think it's very tough for people who work for the city who are working really hard to try to process these things. You talk to advocates, you talk to city workers, and you talk to people in shelters. They say that this is really a problem when it comes to staffing, when it comes to some- not flexibility, when it comes to approving these applications and delays, when it comes to coming out to look at apartments, to approve them. That's all been an issue, a long-standing issue.

The second issue, which the lawsuit deals with, is probably even worse because it's people who have permanent housing who are getting cut off and not really knowing why, and coming as a surprise in many instances when they are notified by their landlord that they owe rent.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Jennarda (phonetic) in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Hello, Jennarda (phonetic).

Jennarda: Hi. Long time, first time. Brian, I love your segment. The reason for my call is because it caught my attention in regards to people that have programs. I'm a real estate agent in Brooklyn, well, broker, but I have a client that I have been representing in trying to get into apartment that has a voucher, and it's been since September that it's taking so long.

The people that are working to get these people, people in homes, and I feel terrible because we're doing our best to get these people into homes, and it's just taking so long. The system just seems to be backed up. For some reason, even when we send over the documents required, we have been requested to resend them over because something was not either filled up right, or something got lost in the emails. It's just taking so long, and it's just so backed up.

This is what we're dealing with as agents trying to help everyone into a home. These people are in shelters, and we're all trying to do our best to get them out of shelters, but the system is just so backed up, and they're not really helping agents either. They're trying to get these people out, but they're not helping the agents, they're not helping the landlords. They're not helping speed up the process at all.

Brian Lehrer: What would help you?

Jennarda: What would help? I guess just being on top, maybe. I don't know if they are short-staffed. Maybe having more reliable people to work these programs a lot faster because even with landlords, like I said, it's been since September, and documents have been requested and then re-requested to be resubmitted, and they're backed up. I don't know, it just feels bad because now the landlord is losing rent also since September. There are other people that are looking into this apartment, and I don't want the client that I've been working with to lose -

Brian Lehrer: To lose it.

Jennarda: -the chance because-- Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: To have a home.

Jennarda: All of this work that we do.

Brian Lehrer: Jennarda (phonetic), thank you very much. Thank you very much for your compassion and your story with our housing reporter, David Brand, talking about problems with the city's vouchers system. David, one of the things that Jennarda (phonetic) just mentioned there just as speculation as to why this gets so blocked up is maybe they're short-staffed. We've talked on the show about staffing shortages in various city agencies before. Do you have a sense of how much that's contributing to problems here?

David Brand: Yes, I think that's a big part of it. The Department of Social Services, which oversees the Department of Homeless Services and Human Resources Administration, I think was down one of every five budgeted staff lines. Recently there has been staffing shortages affecting the administration of food stamps, cash assistance, and now we see with CityFHEPS and re-certifications for CityFHEPS. I think that is a problem.

I think another problem may be that only a small number of people are actually approved to process these applications. The answer might be expanding the rules to allow more people to do this kind of processing, to get these applications certified, re-certified, and speed up these moves. I think Jennarda (phonetic) made some really great points that I hear from property owners, and I hear from people on the real estate agent side who want to make this work, but it takes a long time.

There are bonuses attached to it, so if you are a landlord who accepts the city voucher holder and houses them, then you will get financial bonuses for that. In some instances that may be offset by the delays in not having that unit filled. These delays really undermine what is a really important, crucial tool. Spoke with some people, leading up to this conversation on landlord side, on the tenant side, on the advocate side, no one thinks this program should go away. This is an amazing opportunity for a lot of people, and it's worked for a lot of, lot of people, but some of these bureaucratic obstacles are really complicating it and undermining its success.

Brian Lehrer: Let's hear a story from a former landlord that's relevant to this. John calling in from TNEC, you're on WNYC. Hi, John.

John: Hi. Yes, I was a small landlord in New York City and we had a tenant under the program. It was a great program and I warmly recommended that landlords should accept it. The only problem was that when we sold the building, it was very difficult to make the transfer to the new landlord of the rent checks. It wasn't clear at all who we, as the seller, were supposed to contact. We were advising the new landlord, and he didn't know how either.

I believe it was from June to maybe October before they got the first check, they kept sending the checks to us. Of course, we didn't cash them. Fortunately, he was cool and, I guess, didn't need the money that urgently and didn't try to evict the tenant. None of us knew how to access the system, and it took about four months for the transfer to be made.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think that's one of the reasons, based on your experience as a landlord, that some landlords don't accept vouchers as the source of rent payment, won't take the tenants who pay that way?

John: I don't know. Originally, the tenant had- they were in a shelter and the amount of the voucher was, I think, up to about $1,500 or so. When I asked her whether she thought that that was why she kept getting turned down was discrimination because of the source of income, and she said she thought it was just that it wasn't high enough rent for the landlords.

In our case, we had a mixed-income building and the low-income rents were about $1,295, I think, for a one-bedroom. We would've been happy to have her come anyway, but that wasn't a problem. I think that the city did raise the amount, which should have helped, somewhat, in terms of accessibility. I'm sure that the paperwork could also have been an issue.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, John. David, the public awareness campaign that we were going to talk about in this segment before the Deputy Commissioner for Human Rights had to cancel has to do with that issue, the federal Section 8 vouchers and CityFHEPS that landlords often refuse to rent to people with, which is illegal. The Housing Rights Initiative settled the lawsuit with several big landlords over this issue, as you know. Where do the two issues intersect?

David Brand: That's a great question and a great point because source-of-income discrimination is what it's called when a landlord or an agent or a broker just denies someone based on the funding source of the apartment. Whether that's their own cash, their income, or if they're getting support from the government through something like CityFHEPS or Section 8.

That's rampant. It's hard to find someone who has some type of housing voucher who hasn't experience either very explicit source-of-income discrimination where a property owner or, more often, an agent will say, "We don't take programs, no vouchers," or even will post it in apartment listings. What's even more common, I think is what they call ghosting, where once a broker seems willing to show someone apartment, finds out that that person has a CityFHEPS voucher or a Section 8 voucher or another rental assistance program just stops returning calls or stops returning emails. That's near universal for people who have vouchers.

I would like to hear more about how the city is going to crack down on that type of discrimination. It's the most common complaint fielded by the city's Commission on Human Rights. Yet in recent years, the unit tasked with enforcing source-of-income discrimination has really dwindled to the point where there was not a single attorney dedicated to these cases.

They have said that they are spreading them around the agency so that attorneys who field other types of civil rights claims will also be dealing with these. The mayor has talked about hiring testers, people who would pose as voucher holders or pose as non-voucher holders to apply for apartments and then catch the people on the real estate side in the act of discrimination. Unclear if that's started yet, so really looking forward to hearing more about that as well.

Brian Lehrer: I'll also note to the previous caller, the landlord caller's point about sometimes the amount of the voucher not matching up to the amount of the rent. I think last year the City Council raised the amount of the vouchers to bring them more in line with actual rents. You're talking about enforcement of source-of-income discrimination against people paying with vouchers. They just don't have people enforcing it.

Last question. The funding of vouchers is on the table, I see with the state and the city budgets in play right now for the new fiscal years. Plus the governor's plan to require more housing to be built, including in the suburbs, seems to be one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the now late state budget negotiations. Where do those things stand? Give us about a 30-second answer on this and then we're out of time.

David Brand: Now late and getting later, because it looks like they're on the verge of issuing another extender for another week to deal with some of this stuff while they, I guess, sort through some of the bail stuff that's sucking up a lot of the oxygen. When it comes to Hochul's housing plan, she wants to issue penalties to cities and towns that don't meet certain housing targets.

That's become a conceptual divide among her and many members of the State Legislature that I still think they're trying to break through. The members of State Legislature say, "No, we don't need to do penalties. We need incentives to try to entice towns to create more housing." People say, "Actually, that doesn't work anywhere. We need some type of penalty where the state could come in and approve it if the towns don't."

You mentioned vouchers. There's a proposal for Housing Access Voucher Program, which would be a state version of Section 8, and apply throughout the state and probably take the place of something like CityFHEPS. It seems like there's not much movement on that. There's some smaller window-dressing proposals to allow for more density in certain parts of the city, like chunkier buildings, more apartments, maybe even taller buildings, to ease the conversion of offices to residential use, so to turn empty offices into apartments. TBD. I think we still have more than a week left when we really get down to it.

Brian Lehrer: David Brand, who's been making a career reporting on housing in New York City, and happy to say he's now doing it for WNYC and Gothamist. Thanks for coming on, David.

David Brand: Thanks for having me, Brian.

 

 

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