San Diego Called Out for Section 8 Housing Discrimination

Despite skyrocketing rents, San Diego uses three-year-old rental values and refuses to enact an ordinance prohibiting discrimination against renters using housing vouchers, writes San Diego based poverty law attorney Parisa Ijadi-Maghsoodi. She quotes the Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law article:

In cities like San Diego, for example, where hundreds of veterans remain on the street because they have nowhere to use their housing vouchers, government officials are desperately seeking landlords who will accept vouchers and help house the nation’s veterans. This is particularly disturbing because vouchers are largely responsible for the reduction in homeless veterans nationwide.

The blanket refusal of some landlords to house voucher holders increases the harm and severity of the country’s rental housing crisis, continues a cycle of poverty and segregation, and perpetuates housing barriers that are often based on misguided stereotypes. Yet there are a number of ways to address this issue.

Ijadi-Maghsoodi goes on to examine the barriers to using Section 8 housing vouchers and the consequences of San Diego’s failure to act, including a table comparing 2015 and 2018 rents by zip code. For more detail, see the source article.