Housing Out Of Reach

On October 8, 2024, the Inner City Law Center and partners announced the filing of a mass civil rights complaint with California’s Civil Rights Department. They accuse 203 landlords, real estate agents, and brokerage firms of engaging in housing discrimination against Section 8 voucher holders.

Will it make a difference?

California’s Longstanding Failure to Enforce Source of Income Protections

Since January 1, 2020, California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) has prohibited housing providers from discriminating against prospective tenants based on their source of income, including the use of a Section 8 voucher. Several California municipalities, nineteen as of September 2024, have also enacted ordinances containing source of income protections.

Enforcement of these protections, however, is grossly lacking.

In January 2023, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) filed a lawsuit against 22 housing providers in Los Angeles for discriminating against Robert Gardner, a Section 8 tenant. The case was filed after the State’s Civil Rights Department declined to investigate any of his complaints, which included texts, advertisements, and direct messages from his housing provider that explicitly stated that Section 8 would not be accepted. The Los Angeles Times did a piece shortly before the court filing, highlighting the State’s lack of enforcement efforts.

In June 2023, DREDF sent Public Record Act requests to both the California Civil Rights Department and to all the California municipalities with local ordinances containing source of income protections.[1] DREDF requested information about enforcement of source of income protections from all of these entities. The responses received confirmed the lack of enforcement of source of income protections on both the State and local level. The information revealed, among other things, that:

• The California Civil Rights Department had only filed one lawsuit challenging source of income discrimination in the 3.5 years after FEHA took effect.
• Only 1 of the municipalities—the City of Santa Monica—had taken any affirmative enforcement action to enforce the source of income protections in their local ordinances.[2]

Since the July 2023 Public Records Act request, the California Civil Rights Department has filed a couple of additional individual actions challenging source of income discrimination, but not enough to have any deterrent effect on the widespread discrimination that continues to occur throughout the state, as evidenced by the testing upon which Inner City Law Center’s recent complaint is based. Additionally, DREDF attempted to engage with each of the municipalities with the source of income ordinances that reported no affirmative enforcement efforts, with largely disappointing results. Only the cities of Alameda, Corte Madera, and East Palo Alto responded to DREDF, and have since agreed to take new affirmative steps to combat discrimination based on source of income in their communities.  The other municipalities contacted—including cities with large, unhoused populations like Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego—completely ignored DREDF’s communications.

Homelessness is the Result of the Unaffordable Housing Market, Which Federal Rent Subsidies Help to Address. Enforcement is Necessary.

The primary cause of current levels of homelessness is the unaffordable housing market.[3]  As of March 2024, the United States has a shortage of 7.3 million rental homes available to renters with extremely low incomes – that is, incomes at or below either the federal poverty guideline or 30% of their area median income, whichever is greater.[4] Only 34 affordable and available rental homes exist for every 100 extremely low-income renter households.[5] Extremely low-income renters face a shortage in every state and major metropolitan area.[6]

In California specifically, there is an estimated 1,282,835 extremely low-income households and only 24 affordable and available rental homes for every 100 of these households.[7]

For people with disabilities, the situation is particularly bleak. Disabled people disproportionately live in poverty.[8] Many—over 4 million nationwide—rely on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits to meet their basic needs.[9] It’s not enough. In an ongoing study of the housing market for people living on SSI, the Technical Assistance Collaborative found that “there is no United States housing market in which a person living solely on [SSI] can afford a safe, decent apartment without rental assistance.”[10] This is particularly true in California, where the average rent for a basic one-bedroom apartment is $1,398 per month, which constitutes 138% of the $943 an individual can receive in maximum monthly SSI income.[11]

Federal rent subsidies help bridge the gap between low incomes and an unaffordable housing market. They are a necessary tool in combatting homelessness. California’s failure to enforce source of income protections allows homelessness to continue and has had a particularly devastating impact on people with disabilities, a community that disproportionately relies on federal rent subsidies to afford rental housing,[12] and that already faces unique challenges and deep-rooted stigmas that increase their risk of becoming—and remaining—unhoused.[13]

Inner City Law Center’s mass complaint presents a unique opportunity for the State to take real action on behalf of over 300,000 households in California who rely on Section 8 to afford a safe, clean place to live.

Will California step up?

Learn More, Do More

In addition to complaints, like those brought by Inner City Law Center, there are things you can do, or advocate for, both nationally and locally to help combat source of income discrimination (and particularly Section 8 discrimination) in your community:

• Educate and train voucher holders and their advocates, as well as housing providers, about source of income protections. See e.g., Discrimination in Tenant Screening.
• Be active in more accurately branding Section 8. Challenge Section 8 myths and promote its advantages. See e.g., Speaking the Truth About Section 8.
• Support fair housing organizations that conduct testing to reveal and challenge discrimination.
• Advocate for financial incentives such as tax breaks, security deposit assistance and other incentives for landlord participation in the Section 8 program.
• Advocate for state and local funding of enforcement efforts.
• Advocate for Federal legislation prohibiting source of income discrimination.
• Advocate for increases in voucher payment standards

Endnotes

[1] At that time there were 17: Alameda, Berkeley, Corte Madera, Fairfax, City and County of Los Angeles, Marin, Mill Valley, Milpitas, Novato, San Anselmo, San Diego, San Francisco, San Rafael, Santa Clara, Santa Monica and Woodland.

[2] DREDF attempted to engage with the municipalities that reported no affirmative enforcement efforts, with largely disappointing results. Only the cities of Alameda, Corte Madera, and East Palo Alto responded to DREDF, and have agreed to take new affirmative steps to combat discrimination based on source of income in their communities.  The other municipalities contacted—including cities with large, unhoused populations like Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego—completely ignored DREDF’s communications.

[3] Riordan Frost, Record Homelessness Amid Ongoing Affordability Crisis, Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University (February 12, 2024), https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/record-homelessness-amid-ongoing-affordability-crisis.

[4] Nat’l Low Income Hous. Coal., The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes (March 2024) at 6.

[5] Id.

[6] Id. at 2.

[7] Id. at Appendix A.

[8] Ctr. Rsch. on Disability, Section 6: Poverty, https://www.researchondisability.org/ADSC/compendium-table-contents/section-6-poverty (last visited October 8, 2024) (in 2022, 24.9% of disabled people living in poverty compared to 10.1% of people without disabilities).

[9] Tech. Assistance Collaborative, Priced Out: The Housing Crisis for People with Disabilities, https://www.tacinc.org/resources/priced-out/ (last visited October 8, 2024).

[10] Id.

[11] Id.; Soc. Sec. Admin., How Much You Could Get From SSI. Even if you include the California supplement ($239.94) in the calculations, the average rent for a basic 1-bedroom would still exceed an individual’s monthly benefit amount (constituting 118% of the individual’s monthly income).

[12] See Ctr. on Budget & Pol. Priorities, United States Federal Rental Assistance Fact Sheet (2022), https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/12-10-19hous-factsheet-us.pdf. (At least 25% of people receiving federal rental assistance have a disability.)

[13] See Amicus Brief of Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, et al., in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, No. 23-175. https://dredf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Grants-Pass-Amicus-ACCESSIBLE-2.pdf