Akron bill could protect Section 8 renters from discrimination

On May 1, 2021

Mayor Dan Horrigan’s administration on Monday will try for a fifth time to get the public and council to support a broadly misunderstood anti-discrimination bill.

The “source of income” legislation is intended to prohibit discrimination against people who use public assistance to pay for their housing.

Dominating an hour of public comments at a meeting this week , landlords and real estate investors criticized the personal financial choices of Section 8 tenants and shared stories of how renters with housing vouchers mistreat their properties. The landlords slammed the proposed law for potentially forcing them to participate in the voluntary Section 8 program funded through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and run locally by Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority (AMHA).

But the new city law would still allow landlords to refuse to rent to voucher holders for other reasons, from whether they have pets or smoke to factors that researchers say are more common among tenants who get housing assistance, like an eviction in the past three years, low credit scores or low wages.

Some council members said that they thought the source of income bill would only prevent landlords from advertising that they won’t accept housing vouchers. While that would be a blatant violation of the new rule, council eventually concluded that the law would prevent a landlord from denying an apartment to tenant with a housing voucher while renting to someone else with the same level of income level, eviction record and credit score but no housing voucher.

As written, the proposed legislation would not change the city’s code of ordinances that relate to discrimination in housing. Instead, people who try to pay for services with “public assistance” — housing vouchers, veterans and retirement benefits, rental assistance, Social Security and others — would be protected by the city’s broad anti-discrimination laws that currently cover race, religion, gender, disability, marital of family status, age, sexual orientation and more.

So, while the new law was introduced by the mayor through council’s Housing and Neighborhood Assistance committee and, so far, the discussion and testimony have focused only on the consequences for Akron’s private rental market, creating a new protected class based on source of income would make it illegal for any private business to turn away customers solely because they’re paying with public assistance.

“That’s broad enough to say, for example, that a grocery store can’t refuse to sell food to someone who is on the food stamp program or has WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children) benefits,” said Jonathan Entin, a professor emeritus of law and adjunct political science professor at Case Western Reserve University. “I think it does go that far.”

After the Beacon Journal questioned the city about the intent of the law, the mayor’s office said an amendment will be introduced Monday to limit the protections to real estate transactions, including rental contracts. The city’s law department modeled the current legislation on similar bills passed in other cities and states.

Horrigan also is moving forward with the formation of landlord-tenant council, which he had hoped to form last year before the pandemic hit. The council would allow adversarial voices to work through complex issues.

Akron also considering cap on late rent fees

Meanwhile, Akron City Council is simultaneously considering a second, less controversial proposal from the administration that would give tenants a legal defense to stay an eviction if they come up with all of their back rent and fees. While written in response to the pandemic’s exacerbating impact on the “ongoing housing crisis” in America, this “pay to stay” legislation — like the source of income bill — would become a permanent change to city code if passed.

The pay to stay proposal caps late fees at 5%, which the city said will be upped to 8% in an amendment expected Monday.

The bills have made clear a gulf of misunderstanding among landlords, tenants, lawmakers and the public. Council likely will require another week to consider the latest changes arriving Monday.

Historic segregation by race, income

As a board member for the past nine years at the Fair Housing Center for Race and Research in Cleveland, Entin supports anti-discrimination protection for renters with housing vouchers.

Congress approved the Section 8 program in 1974 to help low-income Americans with rent. The assistance flowed to project-based housing, which concentrated poverty and segregated disproportionately Black and minority participants in the program.

In 1983, Congress created the housing voucher option to desegregate the program. Renters pay 30% of their adjusted income and the voucher pays the rest of the rent, if a landlord accepts it.

But decades of research show that voucher mobility — or the ability to find Section 8 apartments in a neighborhood of the recipient’s choice — has been limited by private landlords who refuse to participate in the voluntary federal program. Along with negative past experiences, landlords say they don’t want the hassle or costs associated with program’s required home inspections, paperwork and repairs, like the abatement of lead paint.

Today, proponents of source of income legislation see the lack of landlord participation in Section 8 as a proxy for racial discrimination. Less than 30% of Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority’s 5,314 housing voucher clients are white — in a county where 78% of residents are white. AMHA Deputy Director Debbie Barry, who oversees the voucher program, said 80% of voucher clients are “extremely low income” and 82% are women listed as the heads of their households, which often include young children.

And 67% are Black compared to 15% of the county or 30% of Akron residents, according the U.S. Census Bureau.

One of the most comprehensive studies of source of income laws was commissioned by the HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research in 2011. Columbia University Professor Lance Freeman compared the outcomes of voucher recipients before and after source of income legislation took effect. With the law in place, he found recipients had a 4-11% better chance of using their voucher. The apartments they found were in neighborhoods with neighbors who were 15-22% more likely to be white.

Why cities pass source of income

According to a listing updated this month by the Poverty & Race Research Council, a national organization, 19 states and the District of Columbia have enacted source of income legislation, as well as 12 municipalities in Ohio: Toledo, Cincinnati and Columbus; Bexley, Reynoldsburg and Westerville in Franklin County; Cleveland Heights, Linndale, South Euclid, University Heights and Warrensville Heights in Cuyahoga County; and Wickliffe in Lake County.

In four states, either by legislative design or court interpretation, the anti-discrimination laws exclude or do not fully cover housing voucher recipients.

The legislation is gaining traction in Ohio, most recently in the suburbs around Columbus. Reversing the voucher program’s history of segregating incomes and races is giving other communities, including Cleveland and Akron, interest as well, said Katie Fallon, director of housing policy at Ohio Housing Finance Agency, an independent state agency focused on affordable housing.

“A lot of neighborhoods are looking at it critically and saying, ‘Well, we don’t want Bexley to be cut off from people who might thrive living in this sort of neighborhood, because studies show generally that if you live in a higher opportunity neighborhood you’re much more likely to have positive lifetime outcomes, especially if you’re there before the age of 13,” said Fallon, who has a doctorate in sociology. “You’re much more likely to have higher lifetime income, more likely to go to college, have higher annual income as well.”

How Akron’s law would work

Enforcement of source of income laws can be tricky, experts say.

It’s paramount that a single commission or court process discrimination complaints so that the program’s impact can be monitored and measured. Many cities lack the collection or public reporting of data, Fallon said.