Many subsidized renters have trouble finding landlords who accept them in Allegheny County

Patricia Batch is getting used to her new home. It’s quiet and decorated with family pictures, and shows no signs that she only recently moved in.

She hasn’t met many of her new neighbors yet, she said, unlike her prior apartment complex, where she knew many residents and elderly neighbors often helped each other out by picking up items for each other at a nearby Giant Eagle.

Batch, 78, had lived in her previous apartment in North Versailles for almost 20 years, until she had to move out earlier this summer. After a new owner bought the building where she had been living for close to two decades, Batch and other tenants who use Section 8 vouchers to help pay their rent had to move out.

“We never found out why they wanted Section 8 out. All we know is Section 8 people had to leave,” she recounted in an interview last week.

While landlords not accepting vouchers has long been identified as a problem in Pittsburgh, particularly in recent years in some of the city’s hotter real estate markets, Batch and her neighbors had to leave their homes in North Versailles, a small township in the Turtle Creek Valley. As the region’s elected officials have pledged to do more to increase the number of affordable homes in Allegheny County, Batch’s struggle highlights problems often faced by low-income renters.

Housing Choice Vouchers, commonly known as “Section 8” vouchers, allow recipients to pay roughly one-third of their income in rent with a government subsidy helping to make up the difference between that amount and the rent charged by their landlord.

However, landlords don’t have to accept the vouchers — and many don’t.

The city of Pittsburgh lost a lengthy legal battle that would have forced landlords to accept them. A group of landlords that fought the city’s ordinance said the vouchers involve too much red tape, cumbersome bureaucracy, and slow-moving inspections. In some cases, landlords can also get more money by renting to a market-rate tenant than a tenant with a voucher.

Batch is one of five voucher holders who was told to leave her previous home at Landmark Apartments, according to an official with the Allegheny County Housing Authority, which administers the vouchers. Two have left and three are still searching for new housing, the official said.

“When a situation like this occurs, we will contact the landlord and see if there is anything we can do to change their minds,” including offering a rent increase, said Ellen Parker, assistant director of the agency’s Housing Choice Voucher Program. She said she reached out to the new landlord a couple of times after being contacted by a tenant’s family member but never got a response.

Property records show the building changed hands late last year and was bought by an LLC that is part of Pittsburgh-based Birgo, which describes itself as a “fully integrated private equity real estate firm.” According to the company’s website, some of its properties do accept Section 8 vouchers.

Birgo didn’t respond to inquiries from WESA.

Landlords that accept Section 8 vouchers can terminate a lease when it is over, though they do have to follow certain procedures outlined in the lease, such as giving proper notice, said Adam DiBuo, a managing attorney in the housing division of nonprofit legal aid group Neighborhood Legal Services.

“Having a Housing Choice Voucher does not give a tenant a perpetual lease,” DiBuo said. “So, private landlords accepting a Section 8 voucher can terminate leases for end of term.”

Batch said her search for a new apartment was difficult, as so many places she called wouldn’t take her voucher.

“I would say I was looking for an apartment,” she recalled. “You know, the first thing they want to know: ‘Are you under Section 8?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Okay. We'll get back to you.’ That's all I heard when you said Section 8.”

Some landlords have negative perceptions about the program, said Kris Bergstrom, executive director of Neighborhood Legal Services.

“A lot of the objections to Section 8 tenants are from these stereotypes or landlords who think that they're somehow getting a worse tenant because they're subsidized,” she said.

Having to move from her longtime home was stressful, Batch said, and she and her neighbors reached out to many elected officials and others trying to get help in their search for new housing.

“I thought we would get better help because here we are disabled, elderly,” she said. “Our money can only go so far.”

Having to search for new housing in this situation requires time and luck to find another landlord who will accept vouchers, said Anita Zuberi, an associate professor of sociology at Duquesne University who studies housing. “It may also mean relocating to areas away from important social networks and services that households rely on,” she said. “It may mean switching schools for children, increasing commutes to work for parents, or moving away from the places where you feel safe.”

Louis Beswick, a North Versailles township commissioner who worked to help some tenants, said the experience was eye-opening for her about how difficult it can be to find an affordable apartment.

“This was a wakeup call for me,” Beswick said. “And I certainly I'm going to do everything that I can to help out with this housing crisis that we have going on.”

The entire experience was disorienting, Batch said.

“I mean, I'm still sitting there going, ‘What the hell happened?’,” she said.