For low-income families in New Orleans, snagging one of the roughly 18,000 subsidized housing vouchers administered by the city's public housing authority is a rare shot at affordable rent in an increasingly unaffordable city.
But those who manage to get off the long waitlist for the Housing Choice Voucher Program — commonly known as Section 8 — still struggle to find housing because landlords won’t rent to them, according to a report published by the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center on Tuesday.
Sixty-eight percent of landlords said they would not accept a housing voucher as rent payment, according to the study, which reported the findings of test calls made to 100 landlords between October 2023 and January 2024.
Nothing in local or state law requires landlords to accept Section 8 vouchers. That has long posed a challenge to the Housing Authority of New Orleans' voucher program, the authority's main form of housing aid for low-income residents as it has shifted away from owning and operating large-scale public housing.
The results of the study attest to the "growing list of issues residents face when it comes to securing decent, safe, and affordable housing," wrote Ameca Reali, executive director of the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center, in a forward to the report. "This report highlights that for our city’s most vulnerable community members, we have made little to no strides in the right direction."
In a statement, HANO spokesperson Calandra Corder wrote that "HANO is always striving to help residents according to HUD guidelines." And she noted that HANO is "making progress" on voucher acceptance, referring to a 2009 study by the fair housing group that found that just?18% of landlords interviewed accepted vouchers compared with 32% in the updated study.
Demand exceeds voucher supply?
Section 8 – a federal program administered by housing authorities across the U.S. — is designed for people whose income falls below 50% of the area's median income, which comes out to just over $38,000 for a three-person household in Orleans Parish.
Families must pay 30% of their income towards rent and utilities, and their landlord recoups the rest through the housing authority. The total rent is capped by federal "fair market rent" standards — currently, a voucher holder can lease a three-bedroom unit for between $1,676 and $2,453 in New Orleans, depending on the zip code.
The number of vouchers administered by HANO has tripled since 2000, two years after the federal voucher program was created, but demand still far outstrips the number of vouchers available. Currently, 6,908 families are on the Section 8 waiting list.?The waitlist was many thousands of applicants more than that prior to a "purge" of the list in 2021,?according to reporting at the time by WWL.
To conduct the study, testers were trained to pose as Black women with young children seeking to rent an apartment using a housing voucher. Nearly all of the city's voucher holders are Black, and almost half have children.
Forty percent of landlords contacted rejected the testers outright. About 28% of landlords said they were unsure of their voucher acceptance policy, or did not share if they accepted vouchers. A fifth said they accepted vouchers but only if the tenant agreed to extra conditions or fees. Just 12% said they would accept vouchers with no extra requirements.
Many landlords wouldn't say why they rejected vouchers, according to the study. Some said they worried about meeting inspection requirements, while others wondered if HANO would send payments on time.?
The study also indicates that the voucher program is failing to meet its goal of allowing low-income residents to live anywhere in the city, including higher income neighborhoods: The majority of units at or below the maximum rent eligible for a voucher were disproportionately located in high-poverty areas, the report's authors said.
Longstanding issue
That said, the 32% of landlords who accepted vouchers was almost double the proportion that said they would do so in 2009, the last time the fair housing center conducted a similar study. That "suggests an upward trend in housing choice voucher acceptance in New Orleans," the fair housing group said.?
The center proposed that the housing authority develop incentives for landlord participation and provide assistance and case management to help voucher-holders find units.
"Local, state, and federal government, as well as public housing authorities, have a substantial role to play in combating voucher discrimination, creating more housing opportunities for families with vouchers, and decentralizing areas of voucher density and concentrated poverty," the report's authors said.
In recent years, HANO has sought to lure new landlords to the Section 8 program with $500 sign-up bonuses, though it was unclear Tuesday if the agency was still offering those incentives. The agency has also offered higher average Section 8 payments to landlords in higher-income zip codes, to help those landlords offset the higher property taxes they typically pay and ensure low-income residents have a shot at living in more well-to-do areas.?
The fair housing center also suggested that officials consider banning discrimination against voucher holders,?as other cities and states across the country have in recent years.