The Challenge of Finding Affordable Housing in New York City

I am seeing first-hand how difficult it is to find #affordablehousing in #NewYorkCity ever since I signed on two clients holding #CityFHEPS

#rentalassistance vouchers. The vouchers are for a maximum of $2,380 in total

housing costs, whereas the average one-bedroom #apartment in #Harlem, for

example, is $2,495. Voucher holders are not allowed to top up the rent. The

biggest challenge of all is that many #realestate and landlords so not want to

deal with vouchers. This is disingenuous because vouchers are a guaranteed

income. There are multifamily building #investors who only want #Section8

tenants in their buildings because it is predictable income. #Landlords who

accept vouchers know that their checks are going to be in the mailbox every

month. A lot of tenants who look good on paper end up not paying the rent. Many

landlords in New York City are hurting now and are finally able to start

evictions after the pandemic moratorium. There are a few bad apples amongst

voucher holders but the ones I choose to deal with are hardworking folks who

have fallen on tough times. My one client got laid off from her healthcare job

after the pandemic was over and she is also from Zimbabwe like me. My other

client is a Latino guy who moved into a shelter after his divorce, and he is

holding down a job while helping to care for his disabled son. These housing

vouchers have an expiry date and often that passes before an apartment is

found. Every time I find a suitable apartment and organize a viewing when I mention

the issue of the voucher, the agent says no. My client viewed an apartment only

to be told that it was no longer available then we saw an open house for it in

Trulia. I called the agent back, but he would not pick up my calls or respond

to messages. I was asking fellow agent, Jessica Melendez of @eXP in Brooklyn,

to ask her how she deals with this illegal behavior, and she says she reports

them. I do not want to get into conflicts with anyone. The surprising thing is

that the city pays a 15% fee to real estate agents who find apartments for

voucher holders so why wouldn’t you take them on as clients?

When I moved back to New York City, I noticed that the city is full of more elderly people now. Increasingly, they are the only ones who can afford to remain in the city because they either have rent control or they are well-off. Young professionals are struggling to afford housing here. I met a teacher who was moving out of my building going to the South as I moved in because her rent had increased by over $500 for the current year. Black people are being forced out of New York by high rents. Landlords are trying to make up for their pandemic losses with hefty rent hikes and middle-class earners cannot afford these high increases. Real estate agents also add to the sense of scarcity of New York apartments by playing hard to get with potential renters. They hardly ever answer their phones or return messages so there is no simple method for finding housing in the city. New Yorkers hardly ever move because it is not easy finding another apartment at a reasonable rent. Most people looking for apartments in the city are moving from out of state for a job or school, so they are desperate to find a place by a certain date. My clients end up signing with me because they have tried in vain to get anyone to respond to their request to view apartments. I also know several landlords now, so I know there are lots of vacant apartments in New York. Some of them are not willing to pay broker fees to listing agents or invest in marketing, so they have a lot of vacancies. At any one time there are vacant apartments in the city, you just have to look really hard to find them.

If you looking for an apartment in New York City, you have to be making 40 times the monthly rent as your annual income for the past 3 years and have a credit score of at least 700, So for an apartment that you pay $2,750 per month, you need to show that you have been earning at least $110,000 for the past 3 years on your tax returns otherwise you need a guarantor who has been earning at least 80 times the monthly rent, i.e. $220,000 per year. Absent that, you can buy lease insurance like @Insurent which usually costs about one month’s rent. To qualify for Section 8, you must be earning less than $46,700 per year. So, there is a faction of people above that income who no longer qualify for rental assistance but do not make enough to afford to rent an apartment. It is that missing middle that is most vulnerable. At one point when you had $100,000 a year you thought you had made it in life, but making low six figures does not get you far in New York City. One day when I was at @Target buying mops and household stuff, the girl at the register told me she was amazed I had found an apartment because she had been looking unsuccessfully for years. Nobody has a clear solution as how to provide more affordable housing in the city, but the answer would be if there was a database of landlords willing to lend to voucher tenants. Jessica and I were even talking about building an app for voucher tenants. So, if you know a landlord or are a landlord who accepts vouchers, please reach out to me so we can get your rental property inspected for compliance and get you a rental client who is vetted by me.

Deborah Nyasha Peters

REBNY License #118828

NYS License #10401375579

Email:?[email protected]