He has a housing voucher. Will any landlord take it?

Derek Hines says has struggled to find a new apartment for him and two children, despite having a FHEPS voucher and being a responsible tenant. Eagle photo by Jonathan Sperling.

By Jonathan Sperling

Derek Hines and his two children don’t know where they’ll be living next month, or even how they’ll be able to afford the rent on a sufficiently sized place. 

The family of three has lived in an apartment in East Elmhurst for nearly 10 years, but the landlord said he plans to increase the rent from $1,800 a month to $2,700 — a 50 percent hike. Hines can’t afford that.

Hines, 40, does have a Family Homelessness & Eviction Prevention Supplement, a program known as FHEPS, that is offered through the city’s Department of Social Services. But the FHEPS voucher only allows Hines and his children to rent an apartment that costs $1,557 per month or less. No easy task in a city where two bedroom apartments average $3,300 per month.

Hines said he has contacted about 150 brokers and agents in the past year, and has run into the same obstacle over and over again: landlords at first seem interested in renting to him, but they stop returning his calls and messages once they learn he has a FHEPS voucher.

“I started looking at buildings. As soon as they found out I had a voucher, they would say, ‘This landlord does not accept vouchers,’”  said Hines, who asked to be referred to by an alias so as not to alienate future potential landlords.

A common practice among large landlords

Voucher discrimination is illegal in buildings with six or more units according to the city’s Commission on Human Rights, but it is common in New York City — especially since there is little accountability for landlords and housing agents who stop returning phone calls or outright deny a prospective tenants based on their use of a voucher, according to housing advocates.

“It’s very hard for people to find apartments even if they have a subsidy or a voucher,” said Sateesh Nori, attorney-in-charge of the Queens Civil Practice at The Legal Aid Society. “We see people who have to leave their current apartments because they’re not regulated, their leases are up, and for many, even six months is not enough time to find another apartment.” 

Part of the reason for the number of cases, Nori said, is that landlords refuse to rent to potential tenants who have a subsidy or a voucher because they associate the vouchers with poverty.

“They [landlords] have all kinds of prejudices and preconceived ideas about what a poor tenant is going to be like, so it is a real problem,” Nori said.

Nori added that the Commission on Human Rights handles hundreds of cases of “source of income discrimination” each year. He said that anyone who believes they have been a victim of source of income discrimination should contact the Commission, which has techniques in place to investigate such claims.

In Hines’ experience, voucher discrimination has not always been overt. It’s a “recurring theme” for brokers to suddenly tell Hines that an apartment has been rented out as soon as he mentions a FHEPS voucher.

“The ones [ brokers] who knew the rules would say, ‘Oh, the apartment has been taken. There were applications before you.’ I’m a full-time parent, I’m a student. I don’t have the time to report every single landlord that does it,” said Hines, who attends the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and has full custody of his kids.

Months of searching

Hines lost his job in early 2018. Less than a year later, he received an eviction notice from the landlord, which prompted his monthslong apartment search.

Hines continues to look for apartments using the FHEPS voucher, but he has not yet found a place. If a marshal serves Hines with an eviction notice, he and his children will have two weeks to vacate the apartment, or be forcibly removed.

Hines says that his older child is aware of the situation, but not his youngest. Keeping the stress and anxiety levels down in the household is one of Hines’ focuses as he searches for the family’s next apartment.

“I just don’t know what to do. If we have to go, I don’t know where we are going to live. If we go I don’t know where my children are going to go to school, I don’t know how they’re going to get back and forth to school,” Hines said.

“So that’s where we are, every single day.”