If you own or manage rental property in Brooklyn, you have almost certainly rented — or will rent — to a tenant using some form of housing assistance: a Section 8 / Housing Choice Voucher, CityFHEPS, FHEPS, or a HASA rental subsidy. New York City has one of the strongest source-of-income protections in the country, and it is not optional guidance — it is enforceable law with real penalties. Owners who don't understand it expose themselves to complaints, damages, and reputational risk they didn't need to take on.
This guide explains what the law actually covers, why "we don't take vouchers" is a legal liability rather than a business preference, and how to comply while still running a disciplined, well-screened building.
What the law says
The NYC Human Rights Law, enforced by the NYC Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), adds "lawful source of income" to the list of protected categories a housing provider cannot discriminate against — the same list that includes race, national origin, disability, familial status, and the other classes most owners already know to respect.
In practice, that means an owner, managing agent, or broker generally cannot:
- Refuse to rent to an applicant because they intend to pay with a voucher or subsidy.
- Advertise a listing as "no Section 8," "no vouchers," or similar.
- Ask screening questions designed to filter out voucher holders before evaluating them on the merits.
- Apply a stricter standard to voucher applicants than to applicants paying rent from a paycheck.
- Refuse to complete required paperwork (inspections, rent breakdowns, owner certifications) that a subsidy program requires to process a tenancy.
"Source of income" is broader than Section 8. It also covers CityFHEPS, FHEPS, HASA rental assistance, and other lawful, verifiable income — including things like child support, alimony, retirement income, and disability benefits. If a state or city statute doesn't carve out an exception, treating a lawful income source as a disqualifier is the kind of decision this law exists to prevent.
Who administers what
Part of what makes this area confusing for owners is that several different agencies run the underlying subsidy programs, even though a single law — the NYC Human Rights Law — governs the anti-discrimination rule that applies across all of them.
| Program | What it is | Administered by |
|---|---|---|
| Section 8 / Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) | Federal rental subsidy for eligible households | NYCHA (New York City Housing Authority); HPD also runs a separate Section 8 program |
| CityFHEPS | City-funded rental assistance, often for households exiting or at risk of shelter | NYC HRA/DSS (Human Resources Administration / Department of Social Services) |
| FHEPS | State/city rental assistance program, family-eligibility focused | NYC HRA/DSS |
| HASA | Rental assistance for eligible households through HIV/AIDS Services Administration | NYC HRA/DSS |
| Source-of-income anti-discrimination rule | The law prohibiting refusal based on how rent is paid | NYC Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) |
Knowing who administers what matters practically: if you're troubleshooting a delayed rent payment, you're calling NYCHA or HRA/DSS, not CCHR. If a discrimination complaint is filed, CCHR is the enforcement agency, regardless of which subsidy is involved. Our government housing programs page breaks down each program in more detail, and our dedicated pages on Section 8/HCV and CityFHEPS management cover the operational side.
What you can still do (screening is not discrimination)
Source-of-income protection does not mean you have to rent to every applicant who holds a voucher, and it doesn't strip owners of the right to screen. What it prohibits is using the payment method as the disqualifying factor. You can, and should, continue to:
- Run standard background, credit, and rental-history checks — applied the same way to every applicant.
- Verify the subsidy is active, the household is eligible for the unit size, and paperwork (inspection, rent reasonableness, owner certifications) is in order.
- Apply consistent income-to-rent standards, accounting for the portion of rent the subsidy will cover.
- Decline an applicant for lawful, non-discriminatory reasons that would apply regardless of income source — a documented history of lease violations, for example.
What crosses the line is treating the presence of a voucher itself as the reason to say no, or holding voucher applicants to a visibly higher bar than everyone else. If your screening criteria wouldn't survive being applied identically to a non-voucher applicant, it's not compliant screening — it's a workaround.
Why "no Section 8" signs and policies are a real liability
A blanket refusal — in a listing, in a conversation with a broker, in a verbal policy told to staff — is some of the clearest evidence a source-of-income complaint can be built on. It doesn't require proving intent through inference; the statement is the evidence. Owners sometimes assume an informal, unwritten policy is lower-risk than a public sign. It isn't: CCHR complaints are frequently built from a prospective tenant's or advocate's own testing calls, texts, or emails, and a documented "we don't do vouchers" response from staff is enough to open an investigation.
The financial and reputational cost of a finding is meaningfully higher than the cost of simply screening every applicant on the same terms. If your portfolio includes rent-stabilized units — and in Brooklyn's older multifamily stock, it often does — you're already managing a compliance-heavy asset class; adding an avoidable discrimination exposure on top of it is not a trade worth making.
Payment standards and rent gaps: don't guess, verify annually
A common friction point is that a voucher's payment standard — the maximum the program will pay toward rent for a given bedroom size and area — doesn't always match your asking rent. That gap is a real, legitimate business issue to manage. It is not, on its own, a legal basis to refuse an applicant if you wouldn't apply the same reasoning to an applicant with a similar income gap paid another way.
Payment standards are set and updated annually by the administering agency, and they vary by bedroom size and by area of the city. Do not rely on last year's figures, a broker's estimate, or a number a tenant advocate quotes you — confirm the current standard directly with NYCHA for Section 8/HCV or HRA/DSS for CityFHEPS, FHEPS, and HASA before you finalize a lease.
If there's a gap between the payment standard and your rent, the compliant path is a transparent conversation and, where the program allows it, a documented tenant-paid portion agreed to in writing before move-in — not a quiet refusal because "the numbers don't work," applied only to voucher holders.
How this intersects with rent stabilization
Many of the buildings where source-of-income issues come up in Brooklyn are also rent-stabilized. That's not a coincidence — older, larger multifamily buildings are both more likely to be stabilized and more likely to have units that work for voucher-holding households. The two bodies of law are separate and both apply at once: stabilization governs what rent you can legally charge and how you renew, while source-of-income protection governs how you evaluate and treat applicants and tenants regardless of payment method. Running a stabilized building well and running a source-of-income-compliant building well are, in our experience, the same discipline: clean records, consistent standards, and no shortcuts.
Practical compliance checklist
For owners who want a straightforward way to stay on the right side of this law:
- Scrub your listings and marketing for any language that excludes vouchers, subsidies, or specific payment types.
- Write down your screening criteria — income ratio, credit threshold, background standards — and apply them identically regardless of payment source.
- Train whoever answers the phone or shows units. A casual "we don't really do Section 8 here" from a leasing agent is exactly the kind of statement that becomes a complaint.
- Process subsidy paperwork promptly. Inspections, rent breakdowns, and owner certifications are part of accepting a voucher tenancy — delay or friction here can itself look like a discouragement tactic.
- Confirm current payment standards every cycle directly from NYCHA or HRA/DSS rather than assuming they're unchanged.
- Document every rejection with a specific, non-income-source reason, consistent with what you'd write for any applicant.
When to bring in professional help
Source-of-income compliance is one piece of a larger reason many Brooklyn owners bring in a manager who actually specializes in subsidized and rent-stabilized housing rather than treating it as an inconvenience. At Yak Management, government-assisted tenancies and rent-stabilized buildings are our core specialty — we screen consistently, process voucher paperwork correctly the first time, keep the required inspections and certifications current, and make sure owners never end up on the wrong side of a source-of-income complaint because a policy wasn't written down or a leasing conversation went off-script.
We manage buildings from two units up to roughly sixty across Brooklyn and greater NYC, and we've kept subsidies intact and tenancies compliant even in difficult situations — because that's the work, not the exception.
If you want a straight assessment of how your building's leasing practices and voucher tenancies stack up, schedule a property consultation or call 718-568-9278. We'll tell you honestly what needs to change.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Source-of-income cases are fact-specific and the applicable rules can change. Consult a qualified New York attorney, and confirm current payment standards directly with NYCHA or HRA/DSS, before acting on your specific situation.