Cleveland Heights enacts protections against housing discrimination based on ‘source of

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — City Council has passed legislation to add “source of income” — such as housing vouchers and supplemental income assistance, including help through the pandemic — as a protected class in the city’s Fair Practices ordinance.

It took a rare three readings to gain unanimous approval on April 19, as well as earlier input from officials from surrounding communities that already have the safeguards in place.

City Council President Jason Stein noted that the explanations offered on April 15 by University Heights Mayor Michael Dylan Brennan, South Euclid Housing Director Sally Martin, Heights Community Congress Executive Director Eric Dillenbeck and Cleveland State University Levin College of Urban Affairs professor Megan Hatch were enough to convince him.

“It’s a relatively simple piece of legislation — we’ve already got the Fair Practices Code that prohibits discrimination based on any number of reasons,” said ordinance sponsor and Council Vice President Kahlil Seren, whom Stein commended for putting together an informative Administrative Services Committee meeting prior to passage.

“Source of income” is now added to that list of protected classes, which already included age, race, color, religion, sex, familial status and, most recently in Cleveland Heights, “revenge porn” victims.

Source of income protection has been on the books in University Heights since 2012, although Brennan said that “much of the actual implementation is still ahead of us. We were going to tie it in with the overhaul of our rental registration program and something we were intending to enforce more robustly before the pandemic came.”

Brennan agreed with the assessment that “source of income” has manifested itself as a way of enabling further race discrimination, with Dillenbeck noting that 90 percent of those receiving housing vouchers — including “Section 8” federal subsidies — are people of color.

“We want to make sure we are holding our landlords’ feet to the fire,” Brennan said of the legislation that University Heights City Council passed on April 19. “We still have a long way to go, but I’m happy that Cleveland Heights is moving forward with this.”

The Cleveland Heights list of protected sources of income includes everything from wages and Social Security to all federal, state, local or private assistance payments, such as housing vouchers, emergency rental assistance and disability, military or other veterans’ benefits.

“It’s not a panacea — no legislation is going to end all housing problems, but it would make Cleveland Heights more accessible,” said Hatch, also a city resident. “Vouchers are already used here, but right now it’s OK for a landlord to say ‘I don’t want to take vouchers.’

“This legislation would protect against that and allow more people to live where they want to,” Hatch added.

Originally passed in South Euclid in 2015, that city has had 18 source of income complaints filed since 2018, Martin said, adding that when they see adds proclaiming “No Section 8 vouchers accepted,” city officials contact the landlords and explain the law.

“It’s not perfect and we’re still working very hard on it,” Martin said, adding that believing in the principle is one thing, “but implementing it can be very tricky, to say the least.”

Section 8 stigma

Aside from the lack of any similar legislation being passed yet at the statewide or Cuyahoga County level, Martin believes the biggest hurdle “is just a lack of understanding and a stigma around Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority voucher tenants that is really unjust — the idea that blight comes with Section 8.”

The Section 8 designation has some stringent regulations about upkeep, although Cleveland Heights already has its own rental inspection program, Hatch said, adding that it’s also important to make sure that tenants understand their rights as well.

If possible, Councilwoman Davida Russell said tenants and landlords both need to attend the same orientation session, adding that Section 8 is a slow process and it can “take forever,” whether it involves evicting a bad tenant or taking enforcement action against a bad landlord.

Cleveland Heights Community Development Block Grant Coordinator Brian Iorio said the city could include tenants in future sessions like those it held with landlords prior to the pandemic. The last one was held in 2019.

And with the advent of Zoom meetings, city officials have also considered offering the orientation at least twice a year instead of just once.

Dillenbeck would like to see both tenants and landlords in attendance, recalling that in one session held without tenants, the landlords seemed to “galvanize” after one recommended that they all just raise their rents above federal voucher levels in order to get around applicable Section 8 requirements.

“With tenants there, it might eliminate that kind of ‘crosstalk,’” Dillenbeck added.

Martin added that the goal remains providing “true social mobility opportunities for voucher holders,” noting that once the “source of income” protections were passed in South Euclid, the number of Section 8 vouchers actually dropped from close to 300 down to around 197 — a “steady decline.”

Cleveland Heights Housing Director Allan Butler said that in recent years, Cleveland Heights has been “fairly consistent” between 650 and 700 Section 8 housing voucher units.

Noting that housing vouchers are a federal program, Councilwoman Melody Joy Hart asked if federal law would supersede the local legislation.

Councilman Craig Cobb noted that he has so far found about 40 to 50 municipalities, counties and at least three states where the added source-of-income protections “do not run afoul constitutionally.”

Assistant City Law Director Alix Noureddine concurred that the local legislation will not conflict with or supplant federal law.

At the same time, “this kind of legislation would protect more than just Section 8 voucher holders — especially in the pandemic,” Dillenbeck said, adding that when he was working with the Fairmount Presbyterian Church Rental Assistance Program, landlords could hold that against prospective tenants and even turn them down.

Responding to a question from Stein, Martin said some landlords may have a “legitimate beef” about having to take a class and having rental units inspected by CMHA, their argument being that with the “inordinate amount of time it takes, they could have already had their properties rented.”

On the other side of the coin, Martin recounted how one South Euclid landlord agreed to accept a housing voucher, then asked the couple wanting to rent to work on some housing violations.

“So they did some work, like sanding the floors, and then he decided he didn’t have the time to take the class,” Martin said. “But he kept their security deposit and they had no recourse” or money to put down on another place.

“So there’s a lot of nonsense that does go on,” Martin added. “But as hard as it is to enforce, I think the more of us that do it, the more it will become the standard in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion.”

Realtors unite

Around the time Seren introduced the legislation in early April, the city received a letter from the Akron-Cleveland Association of Realtors (ACAR), based in Broadview Heights, asking local officials to reconsider the proposal.

In the letter, ACAR recognized — on behalf of more than 6,200 real estate professionals in three counties — the importance of access to affordable housing.

“However, our organization does not believe local governments should mandate participation in a voluntary federal program,” said ACAR Vice President of Government Affairs Jamie McMillen.

He added that efforts should focus on improving the program to encourage more participation by housing providers.

“We hear time and time again, it is not the tenant or the check or (other) payment, but rather the strings, or red tape, that are a deterrent to participation,” McMillen said.

Rather than “mandating participation in a voluntary federal program, let us direct efforts to focus on addressing disincentives to participate, or even incentivize participation in your city,” McMillen said.

“We are seemingly in one of the most regulated areas of the state, and there must be a solution that could satisfy all parties and help make Northeast Ohio home for all,” the ACAR statement to Cleveland Heights City Council added.

Read more from the Sun Press.