Housing discrimination complaints on the rise

New Yorkers who receive public rental subsidies filed 125 housing discrimination complaints last year, up 45 percent from the number of complaints filed in 2008, according to the Wall Street Journal. The numbers were revealed at a hearing yesterday by the city’s Human Rights Commission, during which City Council members said they were frustrated that recent efforts to stop landlords from rejecting low-income tenants had been in vain. In January 2008, the City Council voted to ban housing discrimination based on a tenant’s source of income. Mayor Michael Bloomberg vetoed the legislation, but it was overridden, and the law took effect that March. Since then, the Human Rights Commission said it received 260 calls from hopeful tenants who claimed their vouchers were refused by landlords; 214 of those cases were filed officially. Of those 214 cases, 108 were resolved in the tenants’ favor, 42 are pending review, 55 were closed because the complainants didn’t have enough evidence and nine were dismissed. [WSJ]

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter