Corcoran Discriminates Against Low-Income Renters With Vouchers: Suit

NEW YORK CITY — One of New York City's biggest brokers illegally refused to rent apartments to low-income renters with housing vouchers by jacking minimum income requirements up to 40 times monthly rents, a new lawsuit contends.

Corcoran Group — along with a long list of other landlords and brokers — is accused of income discrimination in a sprawling civil complaint filed May 10 by attorneys for the Housing Rights Initiative.

The accusations stem from investigations by civil rights "testers" who, effectively working undercover, called brokers about listings and asked about using vouchers, according to the suit.

In one of many calls outlined in the complaint, a Corcoran representative told a tester they'd need to make 40 times the rent — or roughly $80,000 — for an Upper West Side apartment. The tester said she only made $40,000 and asked if it was a hard requirement.

"Um, it is," the representative said, according to the complaint.

A representative for Corcoran declined to comment on pending litigation.

Housing vouchers are designed to provide homeless or low-income New Yorkers safe and affordable apartments outside of areas with concentrated poverty. Holders have their monthly rent payments limited to household income, with the remainder being covered by the voucher.

The complaint argues that when landlords and brokers apply a minimum income requirement, it creates a "de facto bar to them obtaining housing."

"There are few apartments, if any, on the New York City housing market that would be available to voucher holders if landlords applied a forty-times the rent minimum income requirement," the complaint states.

The most vulnerable residents in New York City saw a "staggering reduction" in safe and affordable housing at a time that more than 47,000 people slept in homeless shelters, the lawsuit contends.

Landlords and brokers who excluded voucher holders from properties thus committed income discrimination, the lawsuit argues.

"They did so in violation of local and state law," the complaint states. "Even as New York City faces a housing crisis and the ravages of a global pandemic."

Read the full civil complaint here.