Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s office recently announced that the governor’s budget proposal includes “a three-pronged proposal to increase access to housing.”

The proposal includes legislation to prohibit discrimination against tenants based on source of income, limits security deposits to a maximum of one-month's rent across the state and prevents potential tenants with poor credit from being automatically turned away by operators of state-funded housing.

The source of income protections proposal “combats source of income discrimination and addresses the issue of landlords who can reject applicants based on their lawful source of income,” the governor’s office said. At the moment, there are certain parts of the state where local source of income protections do not exist. Currently, these landlords are preventing lower income households with Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers, Supplemental Security Income, Social Security Disability, veterans' benefits, and other government subsidies or lawful non-wage income, from accessing safe and affordable housing. As a result, the 650,000 New Yorkers who receive some form of supplemental income, many of whom are domestic violence survivors, veterans, elderly, and disabled individuals, are often unable to find landlords who will accept their non-wage income and spend more time in shelters or in substandard housing and in concentrated areas of poverty, according to Cuomo’s office.

The governor's proposal would amend the New York State Human Rights Law to prohibit discrimination based on lawful sources of income statewide, ensuring source of income is not an automatic barrier to housing, fighting homelessness, and increasing stability for New York families. The proposal reaffirms New York's commitment to assuring fair housing for all.

Renting an apartment “is prohibitively expensive for too many New Yorkers, and unregulated, unreasonably large security deposits disproportionately penalize working families and those living paycheck to paycheck,” Cuomo’s office said.

All too often, landlords charge security deposit, the first month's rent, and the last month's rent at the onset of a lease. The governor's proposal allows landlords to only charge the security deposit and the first month's rent. The proposal will prevent exorbitant security deposits, removing a significant barrier to people trying to find an affordable place to live, according to the governor’s office.

People with poor credit history or low credit scores are “automatically and unfairly shut out of finding a home by landlords who reject applications without knowledge of an applicant's circumstances,” the governor’s office said. Low-income families, immigrants, people of color, and domestic violence survivors are disproportionately impacted and often automatically rejected for a lease based solely on credit history, according to Cuomo’s office.

The proposal prevents state-funded housing operators from automatically rejecting applicants with poor credit history and requires instead that applicants be holistically evaluated to determine circumstances and ability to pay. Over time, HCR will work with State-funded developers of rental housing to offer tenants the option of having rent payments reported to credit bureaus at no cost, which will enable tenants to build credit history, Cuomo’s office said.