Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2023.It is illegal for landlords in NYC to refuse renting to a tenant because they use a housing voucher. But there is no explicit law that prohibits insurance companies from asking about subsidies or denying a landlord coverage because a building has subsidized units.
New York law prevents landlords from discriminating against low-income tenants with rental assistance vouchers, but those same measures don’t apply to insurance companies that routinely refuse to cover buildings that house subsidized tenants. For property owners, the rejections can set off a scramble for coverage, forcing them to pay thousands of dollars more to insure their buildings — costs they either pass on to tenants, or offset by foregoing building maintenance, repairs and other investments. At worst, the practice discourages owners from accepting tenants with rent vouchers, fair housing advocates say.
“I can tell you, on a broad spectrum the insurance carriers do not like them. They do not like Section 8 housing,” said Lynn Ziemak, assistant vice president of Brown & Brown of Garden City, a subsidiary of one of the country’s largest brokerage firms. A total of 682 property and liability insurance carriers certified in New York provided coverage in the state last year, according to the Department of Financial Services, or DFS. But just a tiny fraction of those companies agree to insure buildings with subsidized tenants, said Susan Camerata, the chief financial officer of Wavecrest, speaking last week at a panel discussion in Manhattan on rising insurance rates. Wavecrest owns or manages 30,000 apartments in New York.
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