June 15, 2022 (NEW YORK, NY) – The Fair Chance for Housing Coalition commends Mayor Adams for highlighting the critical issue of housing discrimination against people with convictions in “Housing Our Neighbors: A Blueprint for Housing and Homelessness.” We also applaud the Mayor’s recognition of the devastating prison-to-shelter pipeline, and his promise to work with the State to provide housing opportunities for New Yorkers exiting correctional facilities. We are committed to taking a real stand against discrimination and ensuring that all New Yorkers have access to safe and stable housing.
“After incarceration, you work on yourself, you save money, and you get excited and start imagining a life in a new home. Then they do a background check, and you know that you're going to be turned down.” said Vilma Donovan, about her experience of housing discrimination.
"Eliminating applicants just because of a background check, with no regard to who they are and what they've done to be where they are at this point in time – you’re punishing people forever,” said Hilton Webb, Jr., who has also struggled to find housing after incarceration.
Nearly 750,000 New York City residents have conviction records – 11% of the adult population. As the Mayor noted in his Blueprint, housing providers too often deny homes to people with convictions. In fact, one survey covering 14 states, including New York, found that 79 percent of formerly incarcerated people and their families reported being denied housing due to a conviction.
Notably, HUD issued a memo regarding how the Fair Housing Act applies to the use of criminal history by providers or operators of housing and real-estate related transactions on June 10, 2022 saying, "Private housing providers should consider not using criminal history to screen tenants for housing. Criminal history is not a good predictor of housing success. Most housing providers are not required by law to exclude persons with criminal histories as tenants and can rely instead on other screening criteria that more closely relate to whether an applicant or resident would be a good tenant, such as ability to pay rent, prior rental history, or personal references.”
Therefore, the best way to protect New Yorkers from discrimination is to pass strong Fair Chance for Housing legislation to prohibit the use of background checks in most housing applications. This is straightforward to enforce, and it would provide a strong deterrent to discriminatory practices. Similar legislation has passed in Seattle, Oakland, and Berkeley, and provides real protections for people with convictions. In contrast, “ban-the-box” laws only delay the conviction record question until later in the application process, and still allow too much room for subjective decision-making and bias. It also creates an administrative burden on housing providers, who are required to follow multi-step processes and complete extensive documentation. We also know that the background check industry is largely unregulated and frequently produces erroneous records; one lawsuit found that a single background check company produced 11,000 inaccurate renter background reports between 2014 and 2019.
It is clear: housing discrimination against New Yorkers with convictions is a racial justice issue. It’s no secret that America’s policing, arrest, and incarceration policies have disproportionately impacted communities of color. As a result, 80% of New Yorkers with convictions are Black or Latinx. Therefore, we cannot end racial discrimination in housing without ending conviction record discrimination. We thank the Mayor for acknowledging that this is an issue of advancing racial equity.
This is also a public safety issue. As described in the Blueprint, “Homelessness puts individuals at greater risk of contact with the criminal justice system and increases the likelihood of being formally punished for minor infractions and crimes of survival. Meanwhile, people with criminal justice histories have a harder time accessing permanent housing and the employment opportunities needed to sustain housing payments. These dual challenges cause some individuals to end up in a constant cycle between shelter and jail/prison, making it harder to access services in either system and creating enormous public costs.” Research clearly shows that providing greater access to housing makes communities safer.
To that end, we look forward to working with the Mayor and City Council to pass meaningful Fair Chance for Housing legislation that truly ends housing discrimination, keeps families together, and builds strong, safe communities.
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