Program to add affordable housing leaves Columbia residents feeling ‘blackballed’

When Columbia resident Karess Hampton received a federal housing voucher to help cover the bulk of her rent, she was “elated.”

For five years, she and her three children lived in a roach infested apartment because it was the only place they could afford. This voucher was their ticket out.

Her excitement quickly faded to frustration as she was turned down by landlord after landlord. Many of them told her they would not accept a housing voucher. Hampton said she spent a month calling and touring nearly 100 properties before she secured a spot.

“It started feeling personal,” she said. “Like we were being blackballed to an extent for having the voucher.”

The Section 8 voucher program was designed to expand housing options for low-income families by subsidizing their rent at privately-owned properties. Those who receive the voucher pay no more than 40% of their income on rent. But flaws in the system have made finding housing an uphill battle for many recipients.

More than 4,200 households receive vouchers through the Columbia Housing Authority. At any given time, around 100 of those families are searching for a place to live, said Ivory Mathews, CEO of the Housing Authority.

“We are in dire need of more landlords to lease to families in the voucher program,” she said.

Landlords are not required to accept Section 8 vouchers, but about 1,500 do locally, said Mathews.

Still, it’s nearly impossible to keep track of how many apartments are available under the program. That’s because there’s no such thing as a designated Section 8 unit. Landlords can rent a unit to a Section 8 recipient one year and then to someone in the private marketplace the next.

Mathews said a national stigma associated with the program has contributed to a lack of available housing.

“You might get one negative story about a voucher holder that has done something to place a negative connotation on the program and then the other 4,000 folks are looped in as being bad tenants,” she said.

Donald Wood, executive director of the Columbia Area Apartment Association, said most landlords are deterred by the “enormous amount of restrictions’‘ rather than the voucher holders themselves.

For instance, landlords must perform an initial safety inspection before a voucher recipient moves in and they are subject to additional inspections if a tenant reports problems to the Housing Authority. Landlords also have to get any rent increases approved by the Housing Authority first.

“Most landlords would say they’d rather just rent it out the traditional way than deal with the government,” Wood said.

Even if a tenant finds an apartment that will accept the voucher, they’ll still have to fill out a rental application with the landlord. Mathews said that poses a challenge for some Section 8 recipients, many of whom have “blemishes on their past rental records,” for failing to pay rent on time.

Section 8 recipients also face financial barriers to securing housing. While the voucher can be used to pay for rent, it does not cover the cost of other expenses including application fees and security deposits.

Hampton said at one point in her search she had been approved for an apartment and was ready to move in — until the landlord requested a $1,000 security deposit.

“When that happened my kids just saw me break down,” she said. “They tried to stay strong but not knowing where you’re going to lay your head, it just weighs on a family.”

In an effort to recruit more landlords, the Housing Authority held a workshop last month outlining the benefits of affordable housing programs like Section 8. One benefit is stable rent payments. Because the vouchers pay a proportion of rent based on the tenant’s earnings, landlords will still receive that money even if the tenant becomes unemployed.

But the workshop is not “an immediate solution,” said Sonya Lewis from One Common Cause Community Control Initiative, a local social justice organization that advocates on behalf of low-income renters.

Her group has spent the past two months trying to help four Section 8 approved families find housing using their vouchers. She said she would like to see the Housing Authority do a better job of connecting voucher recipients with apartments and providing temporary housing when needed.

“There’s just nothing out there,” she said. “As fast as we find places, they dry up. I can’t sleep at night because I just don’t know what else we can do for them.”