Advocates renew push to end housing discrimination against formerly incarcerated

The Fair Chance for Housing Campaign rallied at City Hall this week to call on the City Council to pass a bill to end housing discrimination against formerly incarcerated people.  Photo via the Fair Chance for Housing Campaign/Twitter

By Jacob Kaye

Activists are calling on the New York City Council to pass legislation to end housing discrimination against people with a criminal record.

Over 80 criminal justice, law and public defender groups are urging the City Council to pass a stalled bill that would ban landlords from doing background checks or inquiring about a person’s arrest or conviction record at any point during the housing application process.

A similar law was passed in New Jersey last month, however the Fair Chance for Housing Campaign says the law doesn’t go far enough. Unlike the City Council bill, which was introduced in August 2020 and has been sitting in committee since September, the law in New Jersey allows for landlords to check a tenant’s criminal history later in the application process.

“In New York City, it's undeniable that there's housing discrimination against people with convictions, and it's also a contributor to the city's homelessness crisis,” said Zoë Johnson, the policy coordinator with the John Jay Institute for Justice & Opportunity. “The racially disparate impact of arrests and prosecutions don’t stop as soon as somebody leaves prison – a criminal record follows someone for life.”

Johnson says banning housing discrimination based on a person’s criminal record is a racial justice issue. In Queens, Black people accounted for 38 percent of all arrests in 2019, despite making up 19 percent of the population. Hispanic people, which make up around 26 percent of the total population in the borough, accounted for 33 percent of the arrests.

The bill would also break the cycle of having people bounce from homelessness to incarceration and then back to homelessness, supporters say.

“Should I stay in the shelter system? Should I live on the street? That doesn't help the city at all,” said Hilton N. Webb Jr., a member of the campaign who was formerly incarcerated and has experienced housing discrimination. “It’s more conducive to the city's well-being if I have a place to just put my head and I can get a job and contribute back to society.”

Webb was released from prison in 2017 and began his housing search in Far Rockaway. He quickly found himself turned away.

“I looked around in the neighborhood and went to quite a few private homes and I was straight up with people,” Webb said. “I’d tell them I have the money for first and last month's rent but I told them that I was formerly incarcerated. They were immediately like, ‘no, we can't have you living here, it’s bad for the neighborhood, it's bad for the other tenants.”

Webb was eventually able to settle in a supportive housing building operated by The Fortune Society in Manhattan. There, he earned his master’s degree, something he said he wouldn’t have been able to do with a solid living situation.

“I couldn't have done that commuting from a shelter,” he said. “I wouldn't have been able to use wi-fi to be able to continue my classes. Having a place to lay your head at night is crucial.”

Ultimately, supporters of the campaign say that formerly incarcerated people have already been punished for the crimes they were convicted of — once they have been released, it’s unjust to continue the punishment.

“The deal is supposed to be you do the crime and you do the time and you're done,” Webb said. “Doing background checks and eliminating people just because of that, with no regard to who they are, what they are, what they've done to be where they are at this point – you’re making the punishment forever.”