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**Equal HousingOpportunities in New York: An Evaluation of  Section 8 Housing Programs inBuffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse**

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**Chapter 2** 

**Barriers to Fair Housing**   

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**A Hypothetical Scenario**

A hypothetical scenariois provided below to illustrate the Section 8 rental process and some of thesystemic barriers many Section 8 recipients encounter.1

> 
Ms. Griffin2wants to move from her poor city neighborhood to the nearby suburbs. She is anAfrican American single mother of two young children whose annual income fromher job at a restaurant is less than $10,000. She cannot find a better payingjob near her home because her city has lost much of its manufacturing and otheremployment opportunities in recent years. Because she has young children and nocar, she cannot easily look outside the city for work. Ms. Griffin feels thatthe crime rate in her neighborhood is too high and that the housing conditionsand municipal services are below those in other city neighborhoods and nearbytowns. Although her roots and most of her friends are in the city, Ms. Griffinis worried that her children may not be safe there. She would like them to havea chance at a better education and, some day, to have access to the employmentopportunities available in the surrounding suburbs. She now pays more than sixtypercent of her income in rent and utilities for a city apartment with faultywiring and inadequate plumbing. To move out of the city, she will initially needto obtain some form of governmental rental assistance.

As she begins hersearch for affordable suburban housing programs, Ms. Griffin first discoversthat there is no single, central office or location where she can getinformation or help. Years ago, when Ms. Griffin applied for public housing inthe city where she lives�she is still years away from the top of the publichousing wait list�no one told her about other subsidized housing programsavailable outside the city. Even today, no one at the city housing authority, atcity hall, or at any of the social service agencies with which she has contacthas a list of the subsidized housing programs in the suburbs. Nor do they havestaff to help her find that information. She looks in the Yellow Pages but findsno useful information. She does not have the money, time, or transportation todrive to the score of suburban communities surrounding her city, nor is shefamiliar with the logistics of getting around in those areas.

When Ms. Griffinfinally manages to identify some suburban housing programs, she faces thepractical problem of obtaining and submitting the application forms. Most of thehousing agencies and subsidized developments she finds will not sendapplications by mail and will not accept photocopies of other programapplications, even if they are virtually identical to the one she filled out forher city�s Section 8 or public housing programs. To get on the wait list foreach of the housing programs in the metropolitan area, Ms. Griffin would have tospend more time and money traveling at least once, and sometimes twice, todozens of agencies and rental offices. Each housing program and subsidizeddevelopment also presents Ms. Griffin with different and often burdensomeverification criteria and procedures. Some want references from her currentlandlord, others from the last three. Some want to know if she has a criminalrecord; others require a complete credit history. Even when Ms. Griffin managesto obtain and fill out the appropriate application forms, she discovers thateach program and office employs different tenant selection criteria to determinewhether or not she is entitled to assistance and how she will be ranked on theirwait list. Often, she finds that the wait list is simply closed.

Over a period ofmonths, Ms. Griffin grows exhausted locating programs, obtaining forms andverification materials, and hand-delivering applications. She devotes financialresources to her search that otherwise would go to food and clothing for herchildren. Yet her chances of receiving a subsidized apartment or rentalassistance from a suburban housing agency are still remote. This is largelybecause many of the suburban programs to which she has applied use localresidency preferences, giving priority to those already living or working inthose communities. Ms. Griffin is not eligible for such a preference, eventhough she plans to use the subsidy to become a permanent resident of one of thesuburban towns.  

Ms. Griffin finally manages to obtain a Section 8 rental assistancecertificate, not from a suburban program, but from her own central city housingagency. She had to wait years longer than do suburban residents who apply foridentical Section 8 certificates through their local programs. But now that shehas a certificate, it may be used anywhere in her metropolitan area and, indeed,anywhere in her state.

Now, Section 8certificate in hand, Ms. Griffin starts to look for private rental housing inthe suburbs. The search is not easy. She cannot find any central listing ofsuburban apartments and discovers that many are listed only in local communitynewspapers or with local agents. After collecting and carefully scanning theadvertisements in five or six different newspapers, she calls several landlordsonly to learn that many of them will not accept Section 8 tenants. Some say theydo not want to deal with the paperwork and bureaucracy; others give her noreason at all. Ms. Griffin wonders if some of these landlords are refusing torent to her because of her race.

In addition, Ms.Griffin discovers that many of the suburban rents are higher than the maximumallowed for her Section 8 certificate and that she is unable to persuadeprospective landlords to lower their rents. Neither the city Section 8 agencynor the one in the suburban area in which the apartment is located offer to helpnegotiate the rent with the landlord.

It becomes increasinglyclear to her that her rental certificate will be easier to use within the city,rather than in a suburban community. Time is running out�she has to use hersubsidy (she�s told) within sixty days or she will lose it. That is not muchtime to look for an apartment, given that she is a working single parent.Although she requests more time to continue her search, the Section 8 staffrefuses in her case. Ms. Griffin suspects that they would rather give thesubsidy to a family who will more quickly find an apartment in the city. Ms.Griffin also learns that, if she were to find a suburban apartment, she could nolonger work with the city housing staff with whom she is familiar, but insteadwould have to contact and work with the staff at the suburban Section 8 agency.    

Ultimately, the systemsteers Ms. Griffin away from the suburbs, and she decides to use her Section 8certificate to rent an apartment in the city, right in the neighborhood whereshe started out.

**Barriers to Section 8 Mobility  **

Althoughspecific administrative practices vary among public housing authorities and thefull range of obstacles encountered by Ms. Griffin are not present in allhousing markets, individual elements of Ms. Griffin�s story are not unusualfor minority, inner-city families seeking to move to the suburbs. Additionalbackground research by the Advisory Committee shows that the various problemsillustrated in the Ms. Griffin scenario are present in the three metropolitanareas examined. There are six major barriers to securing fair housingopportunities, three of which are administrative in nature and the restnonadministrative. These barriers are briefly described.

*AdministrativeBarriers:*

-  Residency preferences.Not sharing rental lists.Lack of �affirmatively    furthering� fair housing obligations.
*NonadministrativeBarriers:*
-  Poor public transportation.Limited information about    rental housing options.Community attitudes and    discrimination.
**ResidencyPreferences**

Thepractice of ranking current local residents above out-of-town applicants, knownas residency preferences or geographic preferences, may be the single mostsignificant factor excluding eligible minority households from access to Section8 subsidies allocated to suburban areas.3Although residency preference is not technically an eligibility requirement, itseffect is almost invariably the same. No applicant without such a preferencewill obtain a subsidy so long as any local resident is waiting for admittanceinto the program, regardless of whether the local resident applied months, oreven years, later.

Thequestion of residency preferences raises fair housing concerns when it isapplied to a geographic area that has virtually no minority population, since insuch a case the preference is likely to have a racially exclusionary effect.When the effect of local housing policy is racially exclusionary, that policyviolates the Fair Housing Act both by making housing unavailable to minoritiesand by perpetuating existing patterns of segregation.4 

**Rental Lists Not Shared**

Inmany metropolitan areas, there are at least two, and sometimes several, separateSection 8 programs serving the area. One program usually serves the inner-cityand the other serves the suburbs. Since many suburban areas are characterized byfew minorities (generally below 3 percent) and smaller numbers of poorhouseholds, rentals in those areas usually go to nonminorities. Anadministrative barrier to mobility is created when suburban agencies do not maketheir lists of participating landlords available to inner-city Section 8 subsidyholders and only distribute those lists to residents already living in thesuburbs.

Relatedto rental lists is the requirement that separate applications must be filed forcity and suburban programs. This procedure could discourage city residents fromapplying to suburban programs, especially if there is a residency requirement.

**The�Affirmatively Furthering� Obligation**

UnderHUD�s mandate, Section 8 administrators have an obligation to administer theirprograms in a manner that �affirmatively furthers� fair housing. To do sothey should provide counseling to low-income families�and particularlyminorities�about the opportunities to use their subsidies in areas of lowerpoverty concentration. They should also provide outreach to landlords insuburban areas, and provide landlord lists in suburban areas to subsidy holders.When administrators fail to carry out these practices, Section 8 recipients arehindered in their efforts to use their subsidy to move out of high-poverty areasinto the suburbs.

**Transportation**

Inner-cityminorities are less likely to have cars and to that extent they are dependentupon public transportation to reach jobs and shopping areas, especially in thesuburbs. Location and accessibility are key considerations in most residentialmoves, but they are of particular significance to lower income familiesdependent upon public transportation. Families without cars are less likely tomove to outlying areas and more likely to concentrate in central cities or alongmajor public transportation lines. Over 35 percent of households below thepoverty level, do not have access to a vehicle.5Studies have shown that Section 8 families without access to a car are lesssuccessful in finding a place to live.6 For example, one recent report notesthat for participants in two mobility programs, �Minimal public transportationin the suburbs, combined with a lack of automobiles among subsidized families,has been a significant problem both in finding an apartment and in gettingaround once out in the suburbs.�7

Arecent study conducted in Cincinnati found that Section 8 families willing tomove to census tracts with less than 40 percent minority representation werethree times more likely to have a car than those remaining in public housing.8Another study in Chicago identified lack of reliable transportation as thegreatest obstacle to finding employment once in the suburbs.9

**Limited InformationAbout Housing Options**

Manylower income families and rental assistance applicants are unaware of the fullrange of their rental options in choosing a place to live. Families are oftenunfamiliar with or afraid of new neighborhoods and therefore tend to limit theirhousing search. Studies show that even when unconstrained by fear oruncertainty, low-income renters reported difficulty in knowing where to look forhousing and felt that inadequate information had limited the efficacy of theirsearch.10

A1991 survey by the Citizen�s Research Education Network of over 400 Section 8assisted families in the urban core of Hartford, Connecticut, showed that 68percent would be interested in living in other towns in the Hartford area ifgiven the information and opportunity.11The report also noted that knowledge about apartment vacancies and access toinformation about suburban towns is passed through informal networks of friendsand other contacts, further limiting the ability of families living in thecentral city to find out about vacancies in suburban areas.12  

A recent HUD study confirms this finding. When Section 8 enrollees were askedwhere they had learned about the units they wanted to rent, newspapers were themost frequent source of leads on available apartments, after landlord listssupplied by the HA. But they were also among the least efficient. Daily andweekly papers were cited in reference to 21 percent of units rented. Informationfrom friends or through word of mouth were the most likely source, 28 percent,for units eventually rented. Lists of landlords provided by the HA accounted for24 percent of the units rented.13

**Community Attitudesand Discrimination**

Afinal barrier to Section 8 mobility is the discrimination that low-income andminority subsidy holders may encounter as they search for housing in suburbanareas.

Discriminationtakes many forms from subtle to blatant. John Yinger, professor, SyracuseUniversity, told the Committee that �African American housing seekers learnabout 25 percent fewer housing units than do whites, while Hispanic renterslearn about 11 percent fewer units than non-Hispanic renters.�14Moreover, whites are more likely than blacks or Hispanics to hear about specialrental incentives, such as the free month�s rent from landlords and propertymanagers. They are also much more likely to be asked to call back the next dayand to be quoted lower rents for advertised units.15While lack of information may not be a result of discrimination, �it doeslimit housing choice for Section 8 recipients and encourages them to search forhousing very close to the neighborhoods they know and feel comfortable with.�16

Evidencefrom the *Gautreaux*program in Chicago and from related programs showsthat providing Section 8 recipients assistance in finding other neighborhoodsaffects where they end up living.17Housing search assistance is a powerful tool for moving people intoneighborhoods with lower poverty rates and with greater job and educationalopportunities.

Unfortunately,these programs have become controversial because they often carry the image ofbringing the problems endemic to big public housing projects, such as crime anddrug dependency, into the suburbs. However, Professor Yinger contends noevidence exists that Section 8 programs have negative effects on neighborhoods.In fact, he said since Section 8 programs operate by moving low-income peopleinto the relatively few low-rent apartments in a typical middle-class location,there is unlikely to be such massive movement of low-income people into thosecommunities as to have an impact.18

**Endnotes**

1  Philip Tegeler,Michael Hanley, and Judith Liben, *Transforming Section 8: Using FederalHousing Subsidies to Promote Individual Housing Choice and Desegregation*, 30Harvard C.R.�C.L. Rev*.* 451 (1995).

2  Ms. Griffin is afictional person whose experiences illustrate those of many individuals who havestruggled first to obtain Section 8 assistance and then to use that assistanceto move across jurisdictional lines. The hypothetical presented here is intendedto illustrate, from an individual�s perspective, some of the systemicobstacles to housing mobility that**many minorities face.

3  Local residencypreferences are generally used in conjunction with Federal preferences. Federalpreferences are mandated for applicants who are (1) involuntarily displaced, (2)living in substandard housing, or (3) paying more than 50 percent of familyincome in rent. 24 C.F.R. � 982.208 (1995). Ninety percent of admissions mustbe of applicants who meet the Federal preference criteria, but other criteria,including local residency, may be used to rank these Federal preferenceapplicants. In addition, under current regulations, 10 percent of annual waitlist admissions may be separately reserved for local residents, whether or notthose residents meet the criteria for Federal preferences. 24 C.F.R. � 982.207(1995).

4  HuntingtonBranch, NAACP v. Town of Huntington,**844 F.2d 926,937�938 (2d Cir.1988), *aff�d, per curriam,*488 U.S. 15 (1988).

5  1991 AmericanHousing Survey, table 2�7.

6  Shaun Donovan, *Movingto the Suburbs: Section 8 Portability and Mobility in Hartford  *(Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 1994) (hereafter cited as Donovan).

7  Ibid., p. 34.  

8  *PromotingHousing Choice in HUD�s Rental Assistance Programs: A Report to Congress*,U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Developmentand Research, April 1995, p. 35.

9  George Petersonand Kale Williams, *Housing Mobility: What Has It Accomplished and What Is ItsPromise?* (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 1994).

10  Glen Weisbrodand Avis Vidal, �Housing Search Barriers for Low-Income Renters,� *UrbanAffairs Quarterly*, 16(4), 1981, pp. 465�82.

11  Donovan, p. 35.

12  Ibid., p. 38.

13  S*ee* M.Finkel, *Final Report on Recommendations on Ways to Make the Section 8 ProgramMore Acceptable in the Private Rental Market* (Cambridge, MA: ABT Associates,1994), pp. 22�23.

14  John Yinger,statement before the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on CivilRights, factfinding meeting, Syracuse, NY, Nov. 20, 1996, transcript, p. 272(hereafter cited as Syracuse Transcript).

15  This evidenceis based on the comparison audit methodology. In that methodology, the treatmentis compared of two or more people who are identically qualified for rentalapartments, except one is white and the others minority. According to Yinger,�If you have two people who are identically qualified and one of them isoffered units that the other is not, if one of them is shown different units, ifone of them is shown units at different terms, if one of them is given differentassistance in trying to complete the paperwork that�s required to complete atransaction, anything like that is what I would call discrimination.� Yinger, Syracuse Transcript, p. 275.

16  Ibid.

17  Ibid.

18  Ibid.