More landlords are refusing Section 8 vouchers for housing, neither willing to deal with the federal bureaucracy nor to risk missing out on the peak windfall of an expansive rental market.
Glenn Thrush reports in detail about the plague of landlords refusing to accept Section 8 vouchers from renters.
The news follows and expands on findings from an August report by the Urban Institute, and commissioned by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The report "found that 67 percent of Philadelphia’s landlords refused to even consider voucher holders, some candidly citing the low subsidies and their desire to cash in on a hot market," according to Thrush. "The rejection rates were even higher in Fort Worth and Los Angeles, where three-quarters of landlords turned away Section 8 tenants."
Thrush focuses on the city of Philadelphia as an informative case study of the larger problem. Rasheedah Phillips, managing attorney at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia’s housing unit, is cited in the article describing the state of the Section 8 program in Philadelphia as a crisis.
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