PHILADELPHIA – Amid an affordable housing crisis, a Philadelphia woman and a fair housing organization are taking the next step in their source of income discrimination lawsuit against OCF Realty, one of the city’s largest real estate companies, with hopes of expanding affordable housing opportunities for tenants with Housing Choice Vouchers.
In August 2023, Jennifer Cooper and the Housing Equality Center of Pennsylvania (HEC) filed a complaint with the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations alleging that OCF Realty and several associated property owners violated the city’s ban on source-of-income discrimination when representatives of OCF Realty told Ms. Cooper and HEC testers that the company’s properties would not accept their housing vouchers. HEC, the nation’s oldest fair housing organization, conducted an investigation that revealed widespread voucher discrimination throughout the OCF portfolio.
Ms. Cooper and HEC were first required to file a complaint with the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, which had a one-year exclusive jurisdiction period. Now, Ms. Cooper and HEC advance their lawsuit by filing a source of income discrimination complaint with the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.
Ms. Cooper and HEC are represented by the Public Interest Law Center and pro bono counsel from Dechert LLP.
Ms. Cooper, who relies on Supplemental Security Income (“SSI”), applied for a Housing Choice Voucher around 2010, joining thousands of Philadelphians on a long waitlist for one of the only forms of housing assistance available to low-income tenants. In April 2023, she finally received a voucher and began to search for safe and secure housing in a neighborhood of her choice.
After being unlawfully turned away from available OCF properties based on her source of income, Ms. Cooper continued to diligently search for a rental unit. Despite her best efforts, Ms. Cooper was unable to secure a suitable apartment where her voucher would be accepted, and she became homeless for several months.
“They need to change the name of the Housing Choice Voucher Program because there’s no choice for voucher-holders,” said Jennifer Cooper. “We don’t have any choice at all when property managers reject us before we even submit a rental application.”
The vast majority of voucher-holders earn less than $20,000 per year and cannot afford market-rate rent. Housing Choice Vouchers can be a life raft for these families — that is, if they can find a landlord to accept their voucher. In the city’s 2022 Draft Assessment of Fair Housing, nearly 50% of the respondents cite source of income as the reason they were treated differently when looking for housing, second only to race.
“OCF Realty disregarded long-established tenant protections by telling prospective renters that Housing Choice Vouchers are not accepted at its properties,” said Rachel Wentworth, Executive Director of the Housing Equality Center of Pennsylvania. “Enforcing Philadelphia’s anti-discrimination ordinance is vital to safeguarding the rights of individuals and families who rely on housing vouchers to access housing of their choice.”
That same report notes that source of income discrimination results in a concentration of poverty. Households with Housing Choice Vouchers, 90 percent of whom have minority heads of households, are shut-out of middle-class and affluent neighborhoods, exacerbating racial and economic segregation in the city.
“Housing Choice Vouchers are a lifeline for thousands of Philadelphians who need access to safe, affordable housing,” said Sari Bernstein, staff attorney at the Public Interest Law Center. “When landlords refuse to accept housing subsidies, they deny people their right to stable, secure homes and exacerbate concentrations of poverty in Philadelphia neighborhoods. Housing providers must treat all tenants fairly, no matter their source of income.”
“The Housing Choice Voucher program exists precisely to support the efforts of low-income tenants to find safe housing in stable neighborhoods,” said Steven Bizar, Partner at Dechert LLP. “The categorical refusal of OCF to accept vouchers at the properties it manages flies in the face of this laudable objective. Dechert is proud to partner with the Public Interest Law Center in representing Ms. Cooper and HEC as they seek to right this wrong.”
The Public Interest Law Center has brought claims for source of income discrimination on behalf of Philadelphia tenants who use housing assistance since 2019. For more information about this case and how you can support our fight against source of income discrimination, visit: https://pubintlaw.org/cases-and-projects/taking-on-source-of-income-discrimination-in-philadelphia/.
This case has been covered previously by The Philadelphia Inquirer and WHYY.
