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Abstract

Tenant-based rental vouchers have long played a central role in efforts to expand affordability and economic mobility. Despite growing demand amid a deepening housing crisis, funding for federal rental assistance is under attack. Meanwhile, longstanding barriers, such as rising rents, source of income discrimination, and program design limitations, continue to restrict access to housing, especially in high-opportunity neighborhoods. These challenges are now compounded by the growing influence of private equity firms and other institutional investors, whose rapid acquisition of rental properties is reshaping the market by prioritizing extractive profits over affordability and tenant stability. At the same time, consolidation among corporate landlords is concentrating control over large segments of the multifamily housing market. These landlords are increasingly adopting platform technologies such as algorithmic rent-pricing to exploit their market position, raising concerns about price coordination and other anticompetitive practices that disproportionately impact low-income renters. Recent antitrust litigation alleging algorithmic rent-fixing reveals how the widespread use of dynamic pricing tools and the outsourcing of leasing decisions to revenue management software may create new digital barriers to housing and further undermine residential mobility for voucher recipients. This Article bridges emerging scholarship on digital equity in housing and consumer harm from pricing algorithms with ongoing efforts to strengthen the federal Housing Choice Voucher program. It proposes several practical interventions capable of empowering voucher-assisted families to overcome dynamic rent-pricing barriers, including an innovative application of state source of income protections.

Volume

44

Issue

2

First Page

81

Page Number

81

DOI

https://doi.org/10.24926/25730037.737

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/

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