A Different Type of Housing Crisis: Allocating Costs Fairly and Encouraging Landlord Participation in Section 8

The Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program (“Section 8”) is an important effort to make quality housing accessible to low-income families. Although the federal program is voluntary, several states, cities, and local communities have responded to the problem of landlord rejection of Section 8 tenants with laws prohibiting discrimination based on a prospective tenant’s source-of-income. Mandatory Section 8 facilitates the program’s success but also raises significant equity issues when individual landlords face unusually high burdens as a result of mandated participation. Further, mandatory participation undermines incentives to implement an efficient program because it removes the need to attract voluntary participants. As such, an exception is a necessary and desirable complement to a mandatory Section 8 scheme. An exception could be constructed as a statutory exemption or affirmative defense, or created through a play-or-pay approach. Finally, encouraging rather than coercing landlord participation offers significant advantages in achieving the program’s objectives and is an important balance to mandated participation.