Time March 2–9, 2020INEQUALITY| HOUSING
The STay Lodge hoTeL room in CharLoTTe, n.C.,
where Shanna Lee lives with her 3-year-old daughter, Lavi,
isn’t much to look at. There’s a queen-size bed pushed up
against the wall, a mini-fridge in the corner and a toddler’s
pink kitchen play set purchased for $5. The most valuable
item in the room sits atop a counter in a plastic sleeve: an
unused federal Housing Choice Voucher.
In theory, that little piece of paper would contribute
around $512 for a $1,012 two- bedroom for Lee and her
daughter, covering the difference between 30% of her in-
come and a unit’s market rate. But Lee, 34, can’t find a new
landlord willing to accept it. The last two places that took
her voucher failed routine inspections, which meant the
local housing agency could no longer pay its portion of the
rent. So, by no fault of her own, Lee was evicted. Twice.
Since then, she has spent nearly $500 in application
fees applying to at least 10 places, hoping someone would
accept her voucher, which used to be known as Section 8
funding. But no luck. “I feel like I’m wasting my time calling
because as soon as you say ‘Section 8’: Click. You get a dial
tone, or you get an attitude,” says Lee, who usually works
a double shift, Thursday through Sunday, as a waitress at
the Waffle House. She makes $2.13 per hour, plus tips, and
pays Stay Lodge’s $200 weekly rate. “I’m living paycheck
to paycheck,” she says.
Getting a Housing Choice Voucher in the first place can
feel like hitting the lottery. The U.S. Department of Hous-
ing and Urban Development (HUD) allocates more than
$20 billion each year to local housing agencies. But that’s
not enough to provide vouchers to all who need them. The
Urban Institute estimates 25.7 million households are eli-
gible for housing assistance. The average family gets stuck
on a wait-list for a year and a half, but many exceed seven
years, according to a 2016 National Low Income Housing
Coalition report. Some cities, including Charlotte, have
temporarily stopped letting people add their names to the
wait-lists altogether. “I’ve been on a Section 8 waiting list
since I had my first daughter,” says Lee’s sister, Shneila Lee,
who relies on a temporary local housing subsidy resembling
the federal Housing Choice Voucher program. “She’s about
to be 12 this year.”
Closed doors
WHEN LANDLORDS REFUSE TO ACCEPT FEDERAL HOUSING VOUCHERS, LOW-
INCOME FAMILIES HAVE NOWHERE TO GO BY ABBY VESOULIS / CHARLOTTE, N.C.
Once families get their hands on a
voucher, they have as little as 60 days to
redeem the document before it expires.
As both Lee sisters have discovered, that’s
harder than it seems. More than a third
of families who received new vouch-
ers in Charlotte between 2016 and 2019
couldn’t use them before they expired. A
2018 Urban Institute study found that
landlords nationwide often refuse to ac-
cept vouchers. In Fort Worth, 78% of
landlords contacted by the Urban Insti-
tute wouldn’t take vouchers. In Los An-
geles, it was 76%; in Philadelphia, 67%.
Landlords’ reluctance stems in part
from stereotypes of voucher recipients
as lazy, says A. Fulton Meachem Jr., who
heads Charlotte’s public- housing agency.
“That’s so far from the truth,” Meachem
says. “These are families that are working
every single day that can’t help the fact
that it takes two or three or four jobs in
order to afford to live in the city.”
Racism is also a factor. The 1968 Fair
Housing Act makes it illegal for landlords
to deny tenants on the basis of race, color,
national origin, religion, sex, familial sta-
tus or disability. But there’s no federal
law prohibiting them from refusing ten-
ants because of where their rent checks
come from. When at least 48% of Housing
Choice Voucher recipients are black and
18% are Hispanic, refusing to take vouch-
ers “can be a mask for racial discrimina-
tion,” says Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia
Democrat. He imitates landlords’ argu-
ment: “ ‘Oh, no, we’re not discriminating
based on race. We just don’t take vouch-
ers that are disproportionately used by
minority families.’ ”
The result is a benefits program thatSHANNA LEE,
34, has been
living in a
Charlotte hotel
room since
November; she
has a housing
voucher that is
supposed to
help her secure
an affordable
apartment, but
can’t find a
landlord willing
to accept it72