A recent study found that nearly 70% of New Orleans landlords denied applications from applicants with Housing Choice Vouchers, with the highest acceptance rates in areas of extreme and concentrated poverty.
The Mobility Myth: Housing Choice Voucher Discrimination in Orleans Parish underscores the need for renter protections and additional actions that promote renter mobility. The Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center (LaFHAC) conducted the study in partnership with Enterprise’s Gulf Coast office.
Housing Choice Voucher Background
The Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program is the nation’s largest housing program, subsidizing rental costs for more than 2.4 million low-income households, including nearly 16,000 households in New Orleans. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) allocates funds appropriated by Congress for the program to state and local public housing authorities (PHAs). These authorities then provide vouchers to eligible households, who must find a rental property where their voucher is accepted to cover a portion of their rent.
These households often face discrimination from landlords because of perceptions about voucher holders and the HCV program. In New Orleans, where 98 percent of voucher holders are black, discrimination against voucher holders can be a proxy for racial discrimination.
To determine the extent to which voucher holders face discrimination in New Orleans, LaFHAC conducted 100 phone tests of housing providers between October 2023 and January 2024. “Testers," posing as home seekers with substantially similar tenant profiles, inquired about homes listed as available for rent across the city. This method of secret shopping is often used to investigate landlord bias toward protected classes.
Study Findings: Limited Choices for Voucher Holders
With those 100 tests, LaFHAC found that 68% of the time, housing providers did not accept applications from tenants who said they had a voucher. In addition, although nearly one-third (32%) in the study were willing to accept vouchers, 20% would only do so with added conditions. Only 12% of landlords accepted vouchers without any extra requirements.
In addition to the high landlord denial rate, the study found that voucher holders have extreme limitations on where they can seek housing. Because of limitations on the amount of rent a voucher will cover, the vast majority of rental units (78%) tested were located in high-poverty areas. Rental homes available in higher-opportunity areas had rents above established program payment limits and did not meet the qualifications for testing in this study.
These compounding factors limiting housing choice are detrimental to the program’s success, considering that households are given a limited time to find a place to live once they receive a voucher. HUD estimates that nearly 40% of households nationally are unable to successfully rent a home during the 180-day search window, underscoring the need to tackle these issues.
Recommendations to Increase Housing Choice
LaFHAC offers recommendations to increase housing choice for voucher holders, addressing landlord discrimination against them and the lack of eligible rental units that they can access.
The first recommendation is for the federal government, the state of Louisiana, and local municipalities to adopt source of income (SOI) discrimination laws. Many cities and states have already adopted SOI laws that protect renters who receive non-wage income like vouchers to pay rent. Studies have found that more than 60% of voucher-holder families across the country currently live in jurisdictions where discrimination against voucher holders is prohibited.
Other recommendations include:
- The federal government, the state of Louisiana, and local municipalities should adopt legislation that increases the minimum wage to a livable standard.
- The Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) and other PHAs should develop incentives and reduce barriers to landlord participation.
- HANO and other area PHAs should implement expanded opportunities to improve voucher utilization.
- Expand the New Orleans’ Healthy Homes Program and enforcement of minimum habitability standards.
- HUD should regularly assess and update payment standards.
Enterprise has found nationally that PHAs reducing barriers to landlord participation has paid dividends. Acknowledging the extra steps landlords must take to rent to a voucher holder and making the process easier, such as simplifying and streamlining mandatory habitability inspections, is necessary to reduce voucher discrimination.
Additional Enterprise Resources
Enterprise resources provide more information on the HCV program and SOI discrimination. The findings and recommendations in LaFHAC’s report track those from Enterprise’s report Unlocking Housing Choice: Limitations and Opportunities in the Housing Choice Voucher Program, released earlier this year. Last year, Enterprise highlighted the need for income protection in its Policy Actions for Racial Equity (PARE) blog series. Housing choice for voucher holders will remain a policy priority for Enterprise in New Orleans and nationally.
