Three measures moving through the state Legislature are taking aim at landlords who discriminate against people using housing subsidies.
A simple search of Craigslist for “no Section 8” — a reference to the federal housing voucher program that assists very low-income families, seniors and the disabled — recently turned up over 200 rental properties. It is a common stipulation from landlords on popular rental-listing websites.
Laura E. Thielen is executive director at Partners in Care, a coalition that develops and coordinates programs and services for Oahu’s homeless.
“The pure, simple fact is so many people with these kinds of housing vouchers just don’t even get a chance to sell themselves to a landlord,” she said, “because as soon as you see on an ad that they don’t accept these kinds of vouchers, we don’t even look at them.”
State Sens. Joy San Buenaventura, Karl Rhoads and Stanley Chang have each introduced bills that would prohibit landlords from rejecting prospective renters who plan to pay with housing subsidies.
“We really need the private landlords to step in and accept the housing vouchers that we are giving them to help house very low-income families,” San Buenaventura said. “Otherwise, we’re never going to be able to combat homelessness.”
Both San Buenaventura’s and Rhoads’s measures, Senate Bill 2399 and SB 206, respectively, would allow renters who suspect they have been turned down by a landlord due to their housing voucher to bring a lawsuit against them in civil court. A judge could award damages of up to $5,000.
SB 206 also would prohibit landlords from intimidating or threatening renters who are using housing subsidies.
Chang’s SB 2314 lowers the maximum amount of damages to $2,500.
While there are several different types of housing vouchers, the most common are Section 8, administered by local housing authorities. Section 8 vouchers pay landlords the cost for an average market-value apartment beyond about 30% of the renter’s adjusted monthly income.
That means if a person earning $1,750 a month at a minimum-wage job wants to rent a studio in Honolulu, which runs about $1,500 a month, using a Section 8 voucher, the renter would pay $525 toward rent, and the voucher would cover the rest.
If the tenant loses their job, the voucher also will cover their portion of the rent until they are able to find new employment.
Rhoads, who is a landlord himself from time to time, emphasized there are advantages to renting to Section 8 tenants despite the extra work required of landlords, such as passing a property inspection and filling out more paperwork.
“Once you’ve got the Section 8, it’s the full faith and credit of the United States of America behind those payments, and you’re going to get paid,” he said.
Betty Lou Larson, the legislative liaison for Catholic Charities Hawaii and a member of Partners in Care’s Advocacy Committee, explained that landlords often just don’t know the benefits of having a tenant on Section 8.
For example, if a landlord is unable to pass the required inspection due to a small repair, they can get a gift card to fix it from the Hawaii Public Housing Authority. There are also funds available for landlords beyond the security deposit to cover any damage caused by tenants.
“If the landlord says no to Section 8, they don’t know what’s available, they don’t know that this could be a real benefit to them, I think, especially for the mom-and-pops who don’t have a lot of units,” Larson said.
“We want to work with the landlords because it’s their house. We want it to be safe, we want to help them to have a tenant that’s good. And so if there are problems with the tenants, call us back. We want to work with you to resolve the problem,” she said.
“The landlords can benefit from that, also, not only with the stable rent, but with being able to work with an agency.”
According to a policy brief from the Hawaii Interagency Council on Homelessness, 15 states and over 100 local jurisdictions have passed laws to limit rental assistance discrimination. As a result, those areas have seen an increase in voucher utilization rates.
The number of unused Section 8 housing vouchers in Hawaii has been steadily increasing over the past five years. In 2017 there were only 10 unused vouchers; in 2021 there were 68.
Hawaii Public Housing Authority Executive Director Hakim Ouansafi attributed the increase to a hotter housing market and landlords who tend to prefer military tenants who can pay higher rates.
While he initially thought landlords were hesitant to participate in Section 8 because they weren’t sure what type of tenant they were going to get, Ouansafi said he began to see more landlords who had Section 8 tenants for years turning them away for those who could pay higher rents.
Tenants are supposed to use their Section 8 voucher within two months; however, Ouansafi explained that the deadline can be extended for as long as possible due to the difficulty many face finding a willing landlord. Without that allowance “our number (of unused vouchers) would be a lot higher,” he said.
About a quarter of those on Section 8 are able to find housing within the first month, but for others it can take many months and several extensions.
“They got a little bit of hope, only to be asked, ‘How are you going to pay for this?’ And when you say ‘Section 8,’ the door shuts in your face. The morale of that is just terrible,” Ouansafi said.
“But it comes to a point sometimes, and a family after three, four, five, six months, you just give up. They just know that this is not going anywhere.”
The Hawaii Public Housing Authority averages about 200 Section 8 housing vouchers a year, although that number can fluctuate.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, at the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021, the agency received more funds from the federal government and was able to serve six times that many, or about 1,200 households.
Ouansafi said he doesn’t think the extra vouchers are the main reason for the increase in unused vouchers, since even in 2019, before the pandemic, the number of unused vouchers rose to 54 from 35 in 2018.
Thielen said Partners in Care is using its landlord engagement program to help quash misconceptions about tenants who use housing vouchers and to educate landlords about the potential benefits.
“We found that some of these landlords, once they have somebody with a voucher and they realize that there are benefits that come along with it, they’re more ready to accept folks,” she said.
“They finally realize that they’re just people like everybody else and they just need a chance to be able to live in affordable housing with some assistance so that they can really be part of our community.”
There are several other bills going through the Legislature that would create even more incentives for landlords who rent to tenants with housing subsidies, such as a “signing bonus” or reimbursement when a property sits vacant.
“It was really trying to find all the main points of how do we move the needle on this. And the incentives, to us, it was very loud and clear from a lot of people that you need it,” said Rep. Troy Hashimoto, who introduced one of the incentive proposals, House Bill 1752.
“You want to de-stigmatize Section 8 rentals … and you couple that with incentives where you’re trying to incentivize people to participate, and we thought that was a good compromise.”
So far, Rhoads’ rental discrimination bill has advanced the furthest, passing out of the Senate unanimously. It will now go through the legislative process in the House of Representatives.
VOUCHER BIAS
Number of unused Section 8 vouchers per year:
2017: 10
2018: 35
2019: 54
2020: 50
2021: 68
Source: Hawaii Public Housing Authority
