It’s been more than a year since thirty-seven-year-old April Williams, her husband, and three children—ages ten, thirteen, and sixteen—began looking for a rental home outside of Tyler, Texas. But after several unanswered applications, the family is worried that the rental market has shut the door on them—just like it has for many other renters of color in the United States.
Housing experts say the market is disproportionately impacting renters of color, many of whom are paying more money for lower quality housing than their white counterparts.
Williams and her family are currently staying in a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home provided through Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness (PATH), a time-limited program administered by the Texas Department of Health and Human Services. It allows low-income families to pay a fraction of the rent they would pay elsewhere as they search for more stable housing. The family entered the program after Williams contracted COVID-19 last year, which forced the family to take on considerable debt while she was out of work.
Now, Williams works from home as a call center operator for the Texas 2-1-1 hotline while her husband drives a delivery truck for PepsiCo. They want to pay about $1,200 per month for another home instead of moving into an apartment, but the family’s credit history— coupled with the high fees and security deposits—are keeping them from finding a new home. And Williams says the program-mandated November 1 exit date from PATH feels like it’s right around the corner.
“It’s been really hard.” Williams tells The Progressive. “And I feel like it’s only going to get harder if rents keep climbing the way that they are.”
The U.S. rental market is more competitive than it has been in decades. Last year, rents across the country skyrocketed by 17 percent, according to an analysis by Zillow. Meanwhile, housing vacancy data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the nationwide rental vacancy rate—which measures how many rental units are available—dropped to 5.8 percent during the first quarter of 2022. That is the lowest vacancy rate measured since 1984.
And while these figures suggest that the rental market is squeezing everyone’s budget, housing experts say the market is disproportionately impacting renters of color, many of whom are paying more money for lower quality housing than their white counterparts.
“Rents grew more last year than any year on record, forcing many renters to look for a more affordable option,” Manny Garcia, a population scientist at Zillow, said in a statement.
For low-income families like the Williamses, the cost of market-rate rentals has been the toughest hurdle to cross. The average rent in Tyler climbed to more than $1,200 last year. And while this is approximately 16 percent cheaper than the national average, Williams says that it would stretch their monthly housing payments above the recommended 30 percent threshold.
The family has applied for properties renting as high as $1,550 per month, but their income doesn’t add up to three times the rent, as many property management companies require. Williams is wary of applying for a Section 8 housing voucher to help supplement their rent because many property management companies and landlords in Tyler don’t accept them.
When asked why it doesn’t accept housing vouchers, a representative from CrossPointe Management Group, a property management company in Tyler, tells The Progressive, “It’s just our policy.”
As of April 29, there were only two units in Tyler within the Williams family’s price range. But the units are a three-bedroom townhome and a two-bedroom apartment, both of which have less than 900 square feet of space for the family of five and their two dogs.
Meanwhile, Williams says the debt her family incurred while she was sick “crippled” their credit history. This has caused property management companies to ask the family for higher security deposits and higher upfront fees.
The family has also considered making concessions such as moving to cheaper cities nearby, but that would require Williams to transfer her children to new school districts and force her husband to drive farther to get to work.
“We’re paying our bills and trying to make our credit scores go up as fast as we can,” Williams says. “But it seems like it takes so long to see even the slightest change. It just puts us right back in the same place we’re in now.”
Research from Zillow shows that the Williams family’s experience is becoming typical for renters of color in the United States. A recent survey found that renters of color often pay security deposits that are $150 higher than their white counterparts.
Renters of color also reported submitting more rental applications and paying higher move-in fees than white renters, according to the survey. More than 33 percent of renters of color submitted five or more applications and paid between $65 and $100 in average fees. White renters, on the other hand, reported submitting an average of two applications and paying $50 in fees.
“Renters typically do not have much of a financial cushion, and the cost of finding a new place to live can be an expensive burden,” Garcia says. “Regrettably, renters of color are especially likely to experience rising rents, and when they shop for a new rental, generally report higher upfront costs, restricting the mobility that is often held up as a benefit of renting.”
One potential solution could be to expand credit access for renters of color, Garcia says. Credit checks are a fairly standard part of the rental application process, and renters of color often live in counties with inadequate access to credit-building financial products, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Inadequate access to credit also helps explain why Zillow’s renter survey found that just 34 percent of Black renters and 38 percent of Latinx renters felt “certain” that they would be accepted into a rental property compared to 46 percent of white renters.
“I just wish someone would make it easier for people to get into housing,” Williams says. “We need to make it more accessible and make it easier for everyone across the board, not just pinpointing a certain group, financial or otherwise.”