A recent story in the Texas Tribune details the difficulties that the holders of Section 8 vouchers have in locating landlords who will accept the federal housing subsidies. (The federal government pays a portion of the monthly rent for those with a Section 8 voucher.) Under Texas law, landlords are not required to accept the vouchers.
The story attempts to portray landlords who do not accept the vouchers as discriminatory towards poor blacks–the group that is a primary beneficiary of the program.
The way Taylor [the woman who is the focus of the article] sees it, she’s deliberately being steered toward the poorest and most racially segregated neighborhoods. And she thinks it’s because her voucher is a proxy for her race.
Housing advocates argue that landlords in wealthier (and they never fail to mention “whiter”) areas are less inclined to accept vouchers. Those same landlords often accept vouchers at their properties in poorer (read “less white”) areas.
In 2015, Austin City Council passed an ordinance to force landlords to accept vouchers. The state legislature quickly passed a bill that prohibited local governments from enacting such mandates. Housing advocates claim that the refusal to accept vouchers is a judgment based on ill-conceived prejudices about the holders of vouchers. In doing so, they are calling the kettle black. They are judging me based on ill-conceived prejudices.
I have been a landlord for ten years, and I do not accept vouchers at any of my nine properties. Most of my properties are in low income areas, and more than 90 percent of my tenants have been black.
When I have a vacancy, at least 20 percent of the inquiries are from people holding vouchers. Yet, despite all of the benefits vouchers supposedly provide to landlords, I refuse to accept Section 8 or any other type of voucher.
I once investigated accepting Section 8 vouchers. And I quickly concluded that it would be irrational to do so. Before a property is accepted into the program, it must be inspected and any deficiencies corrected. Even if there are no deficiencies, the process can take two months (at the time I looked into the program). That is two months that I would receive no income from the property. Since I usually find a tenant within a few weeks, that is an unacceptable delay. In addition, as the Tribune article notes (to its credit) the “deficiencies” are often arbitrary, needlessly delay the process, and add to the landlord’s expenses.
Housing advocates don’t like how some landlords choose to use/trade their property. And so they seek to force landlords to act as the advocates believe best. They think that many landlords judge tenants based solely on the fact that they hold a Section 8 voucher. But those same advocates judge landlords based solely on their refusal to accept those vouchers. The reasons for that refusal are largely irrelevant.
It is irrational for a landlord to judge a tenant solely on the basis of holding a voucher. It is equally irrational for housing advocates to judge landlords solely on their refusal to accept vouchers. If housing advocates truly want to advance their cause, they would quit calling the kettle black.