This week, a civil rights complaint filed in California listed more than 200 real estate agents, brokerage firms, and landlords who are being accused of refusing Section 8 vouchers.
In 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 329, making it illegal for landlords to discriminate against tenants with Housing Choice — or Section 8 — vouchers. The law has been difficult to enforce, but that might change soon.
Over the last year, a housing watchdog group, called the Housing Rights Initiative — or HRI — has been running an undercover investigation in California.
Investigators pretended to be Section 8 voucher holders looking for housing. They exchanged texts with hundreds of landlords and brokers, many of whom outright refused to rent to them.
“There are 112 separate complaints that were filed with the Civil Rights Department.”
This is David Smith. He’s the director of litigation at Inner City Law Center, a non-profit in LA that’s representing HRI in the complaints.
“This is the largest source of income discrimination, uh, series of complaints that's ever been filed with CRD. I'm hoping that this will motivate the legislature to provide more resources to the CRD so that they can investigate these types of complaints, and bring actions against landlords and brokers where necessary.”
They found that voucher holders were discriminated against 44 percent of the time in San Francisco, 53 percent of the time in Oakland, and 70 percent of the time in Los Angeles.
“Whether they didn't sign up for the program, whether they don't quote work with the program, or they flat out say, 'We don't accept Section 8 beneficiaries', all of those instances, in our view, are evidence of discrimination,” says Smith.
The complaints were filed on Tuesday. Smith says they haven’t yet heard anything from the California Civil Rights Department, or from any of the alleged offenders. On top of more stringent enforcement, they hope that the complaints will result in better education for landlords about housing discrimination.
“This is not something where there's gonna be a big pot of money that's going to be available at the end of the day. This is being driven more by education of the landlords. Making sure that rental units are set aside for Section 8 beneficiaries and things of that nature,” says Smith.
The alleged offenders range from small landlords to major real estate companies and brokerage firms, like Sotheby’s International Realty, EXP Realty, and Coldwell Banker. KALW reached out to Sotheby’s, but they did not respond to our request for comment.
You can find the full list of landlords, real estate companies, and brokerage firms listed in the complaints here.
