This big LA landlord turned away people seeking Section 8 housing

One of the biggest landlords in Los Angeles has been turning away people seeking apartments under the Section 8 housing assistance program in many of its buildings, in apparent violation of state law, a Capital & Main investigation found.

Jamison, a group of family-run real estate companies, has been lauded for its civically active CEO and its efforts to turn underused office space into housing. But Jamison stands out among other large L.A.-area landlords Capital & Main investigated for its near nonparticipation in the Section 8 program, the largest housing assistance program in the country, the investigation found.

In a statement, a Jamison company spokesperson said “the management companies overseeing Jamison’s portfolio accept and welcome tenants utilizing Section 8 vouchers.”

Section 8 is a powerful tool for fighting homelessness and the housing crisis across the nation. But it is especially needed in L.A. County, where wages haven’t kept pace with rising rents. Housing Choice Vouchers, as they’re officially known, subsidize rent for about 85,000 households in L.A. County that don’t earn enough to afford a market-rate rental.

Keep up with LAist.

If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.

Subscribe

At its best, Section 8 and its federally funded assistance vouchers offer a way out of poverty for low-income residents — affordable rent in a community of their choice.

But too often the program fails to deliver on its promises. Four in 10 voucher holders in the U.S. never find housing at all, even after years on Section 8 waiting lists, according to a 2021 study by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

*   *   *

Terri Reynolds, who oversees programs at the nonprofit Asian American Drug Abuse Program to help clients in the L.A. area find housing, said they’re “so happy” to obtain rental assistance. But they are often disappointed, she said, “because landlords don’t want to mess with Section 8.”

The reluctance of landlords to participate is one of the Section 8 program’s biggest problems, even though a state law bars them from rejecting tenants because they use vouchers.

Dan Yukelson, executive director of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles, said red tape and hard-to-understand rules make Section 8 “an administrative nightmare” for some of his members, who are mostly mom-and-pop landlords.

Capital & Main investigated seven of L.A. County’s largest landlords to determine whether they open their doors to Section 8 tenants. Unlike smaller landlords who might be unfamiliar with the rules, these multifamily real estate giants have abundant administrative resources to interpret and comply with state law.

Capital & Main’s findings are based on data collected by testers hired by the news organization to pose as Section 8 voucher holders. From late 2024 to early 2025 the testers contacted leasing agents to ask about available apartments in 65 buildings owned or operated by Jamison, Equity Residential, Essex Property Trust, AvalonBay Communities, G.H. Palmer Associates, Prime Residential and Greystar. The tests were limited to buildings where advertised rents were low enough for Section 8 recipients to be able to move in. Testers asked leasing staff at each building if they accepted Section 8 vouchers, and if so, what income and creditworthiness criteria each used to qualify applicants.

Jamison buildings were the only ones where leasing agents said they could not rent to Section 8 tenants. Of 21 properties that testers contacted, agents at 15 said they could not accept vouchers. At one property, an agent described income requirements that would automatically exclude voucher holders. Agents initially said they would accept Section 8 at five of the properties, but either described minimum credit scores that would exclude many voucher holders, or did not respond to follow-up inquiries.

Capital & Main contacted Jamison with its key findings and a list of questions. In its statement earlier this month, the company spokesperson said many of the issues raised were “completely wrong and/or misleading” but did not comment on many of the specific problems the reporting found.

Last fall, a tester called to inquire about an apartment at Jamison’s Atlas House in L.A.’s Koreatown with some attractive amenities, including state-of-the-art appliances, a swimming pool and hot tub. But they were told the building was not accepting Section 8 vouchers. “We are actively seeking approval to begin accepting Section 8 vouchers, and when that approval goes through, we will publicly make an announcement,” the representative said.

But the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles has no such approval or inspection process, said its Section 8 director, Carlos Van Natter. “We would not inspect the whole building,” Van Natter said, adding that the agency only inspects individual apartments to ensure habitability after a landlord has accepted a tenant’s rental application.

At the Sienna on Serrano and the Roya, both relatively new Koreatown buildings that offer features like modern kitchens, gyms, pool decks and even a karaoke room, leasing agents also said they were awaiting city approvals for their Section 8 participation, which they said they expected within a few months.

*   *   *

The cold shoulder for Section 8 voucher holders clashes with company CEO Jaime Lee’s community-spirited reputation. Last year the Los Angeles Times featured Lee on its L.A. Influential list and named her one of the “bosses, elected officials and A-list names calling the shots from the seats of power” alongside Gov. Gavin Newsom and Archbishop José Gomez.

And in public comments, Lee has bemoaned the city’s housing shortage and positioned her family’s company as part of the solution. Lee, who is a member of the LA28 Olympic organizing committee and was appointed to the powerful California Coastal Commission by Gov. Newsom in September, has said the company offers apartments for people at a wide range of income levels.

What Jamison appears to lack is Section 8 tenants, who are among the lowest earners and the hardest to house; in Los Angeles, for example, most make less than $53,000 per year for a single person. Section 8 tenants pay about 30% of their incomes in rent and the government covers the rest.

Between 2021 and 2024, only one Section 8 tenant moved into a Jamison property, according to records Capital & Main obtained from the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles under the California Public Records Act.

The Jamison spokesperson’s statement did not address the lack of Section 8 tenants in its properties, but said that the management companies overseeing its portfolio “take proactive steps, including engaging a broker and non-profits, to help identify individuals and families who hold vouchers or qualify for income-restricted Affordable Housing units.”.

But the findings raised concerns for L.A. County Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who, as a state senator, authored the 2020 state law that makes it illegal to reject tenants because they pay rent with government assistance.

“It’s disappointing because the law is the law,” Mitchell said.

Jamison’s three dozen or so residential buildings in the L.A. area were built since 2013, and thus too new to be covered by local rent control laws or the state’s maximum 10% per year limit on rent increases. Under the Section 8 program, however, the company would be required to get housing authority approval for annual rent hikes.

Jay Lybik, a real estate expert who until recently was the CoStar Group’s National Director of Multifamily Analytics, said that given state and local rent caps, Jamison may exclude voucher holders so that it can freely raise rents on its units.

Lybik, who now directs market research for Continental Properties, said Jamison “most likely needs to hit certain return hurdles for their investors and will need to be squeezing every percentage of rent growth. Thus, they don’t want to be hampered by the lower yearly increases allowed.”

*   *   *

Jamison is one of the fastest-growing multifamily developers in Los Angeles. In just 12 years, the company has accumulated a residential portfolio that includes more than 6,000 units — including both ground-up construction and office-to-residential conversions. At least 2,500 additional units are either planned or under construction.

The company has benefited from L.A.’s lucrative apartment market with its low vacancy rate and through-the-roof home purchase prices that send highly paid workers into the rental market. Jamison has also been able to maximize profits by participating in the city of L.A.’s builder incentives. Under these programs, developers can include more apartments in a building than the zoning code allows or get waivers from parking or open space requirements. In exchange, developers set aside a small percentage of apartments for lower-income renters. The company has built some 250 affordable units.

Another reason for the company’s rapid-fire growth in residential real estate: a stockpile of aging Koreatown office buildings Lee’s father, David Lee, amassed beginning in the 1990s — before the area became a destination for nightlife, dining and traditional Korean spas.

“They were lucky,” said Johnny Choi, a first vice president at commercial real estate firm CBRE and an expert in the Koreatown market. “They were able to purchase property at a time when prices were a lot lower.”

Among David Lee’s acquisitions were the former headquarters of iconic U.S. corporations that pulled up stakes after once-prestigious Wilshire Boulevard lost its luster in the 1990s. The former Texaco Oil and U.S. Borax buildings are now the Crosby Apartments and the Westmore, respectively. Jaime Lee has said these conversions and the company’s other residential developments help address L.A.’s housing shortage.

But the city’s largest unmet need — according to records from California’s state housing agency — is for housing that L.A.’s poorest people can afford. Section 8 is the only program that meets those needs on a large scale.

*   *   *

Capital & Main conducted additional tests a few months later to see if the Roya, Sienna, Atlas House and other Jamison buildings had begun accepting vouchers as some leasing agents had previously said.

In a March 2025 call, a representative initially told a tester that the Jamison buildings she inquired about would accept Section 8, but only if tenants earned at least two-and-a-half times the monthly rent. When the tester said those income requirements would disqualify her as a Section 8 participant, the representative promised to double check on the company’s rental criteria and call her back, but she didn’t. Capital & Main’s tester continued trying to get an answer. When she finally reached another agent, she said that none of the 15 Jamison buildings the tester inquired about were accepting Section 8 vouchers, offering the same reason as before: They were awaiting “inspections” and “city approvals.”

Leasing representatives for five other Jamison buildings said they accepted Section 8 vouchers. But three insisted all applicants, including voucher holders, meet specific credit scores. Two didn’t respond to follow-up calls. That requirement appeared to run afoul of another state housing law. Since January 2024, it has been illegal for landlords to reject Section 8 applicants solely based on their credit history. Landlords must also consider pay stubs or other verifiable evidence of their ability to pay their share of rent.

If a large landlord turns Section 8 tenants away, “it would be a major resource that our folks can’t access,” said Section 8 director Van Natter.

Jamison proved to be an outlier among the seven companies Capital & Main tested. It was the only big landlord that categorically rejected voucher holders in many of its buildings.

At the six other companies, agents at all 44 properties said they accepted Section 8, but 22 said they would reject voucher holders for poor credit. Four would not say whether poor credit history would exclude Section 8 applicants and two others didn’t respond to follow-up calls about income and credit criteria.

*   *   *

On the other end of the spectrum was G.H. Palmer Associates, which appeared to roll out the welcome mat for Section 8 tenants, despite owner Geoffrey Palmer’s Scrooge-like reputation and long-documented resistance to government mandates. A 2022 Forbes magazine profile called Palmer “the real estate billionaire who hates affordable housing.” But in Capital & Main’s tests, only one Palmer leasing agent out of seven properties contacted would not accept alternative evidence of ability to pay rent in lieu of credit history, the highest rate of compliance among the seven companies investigated.

Palmer owns thousands of apartments in the Santa Clarita Valley and the Inland Empire, and is perhaps best known for a collection of hulking faux Italianate apartment buildings in downtown L.A., some of them hugging busy freeways. In contrast to other companies whose leasing agents couldn’t immediately respond to testers’ questions about Section 8, G.H. Palmer’s were knowledgeable and responsive.

Palmer, a prolific donor to Republican Party candidates, earned his anti-affordable housing bona fides by winning a court battle against the city of L.A. over a requirement that developers in downtown L.A.’s Central City West area include affordable apartments in their market-rate buildings. The California Court of Appeal ruled in Palmer’s favor in 2009.

But more Section 8 tenants moved into Palmer buildings in Los Angeles between 2021 and 2024 than any of the six other companies Capital & Main investigated, even those with far more units, city housing authority records show. And in other areas of L.A. County, G.H. Palmer had more Section 8 renters in its buildings than the other six companies, according to county housing authority records covering the same years.

Palmer did not respond to Capital & Main’s questions about the company’s participation in the Section 8 program. “He’s not going to talk to you,” said a staffer at Palmer’s Beverly Hills office.

Palmer’s Section 8 stance may be a straightforward case of scrupulous adherence to the law. But it could also be a matter of economics. Unlike Jamison with its portfolio of newer buildings, many of Palmer’s buildings are older and covered by state rent caps. So the need to obtain housing authority approval for annual rent hikes might not threaten the company’s bottom line. It could be that tenant stability and on-time rent payments are a greater priority for Palmer’s business model. Lybik, the real estate expert, noted that Section 8 tenants tend to stay in their apartments longer than unsubsidized renters. And the lion’s share of their rent is reliably paid by the federal government.

Whatever the reason, Palmer’s welcoming response to Section 8 applicants was unusual among the large property owners Capital & Main investigated.

*   *   *

The typical experience for tenants is far more frustrating and obstacle-ridden, according to housing authority data that shows it is difficult for Section 8 voucher holders to find landlords who will accept their vouchers.

“I had so much discrimination,” said Jennifer St. Jude, a Section 8 voucher holder and social work student at the University of Southern California, who finally landed a four-bedroom house in the Santa Clarita Valley with her two adult daughters. “It took me a year and a half, and I not only got lucky, I killed myself to get this house,” St. Jude said.

In 2024, the latest year for which data is available, Van Natter of the L.A. city housing authority reported that about 40% of Section 8 voucher holders failed to find housing before their subsidies expired — even after languishing for years on waiting lists. The program gives participants 180 days to find a landlord who will accept their vouchers before they must return them to the housing authority.

Yukelson with the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles argued that part of the problem is landlords have a hard time getting rent increases approved and with customer service at some local housing authorities.

“You need to be like a dog with a bone. You need to be aggressive,” he said.

*   *   *

City and housing authority officials have tried to increase Section 8 usage with financial incentives for landlord participation and regular informational seminars.

Last year, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass met with property owners to urge them to give the program a try. “We have so many people on our streets with vouchers in their hands,” she said at the public event. “They just need somebody willing to give them a chance.”

A spokesperson for Mayor Bass had no comment on Capital & Main’s findings and did not respond to an interview request.

But Kevin Kish, who heads the California Civil Rights Department, the state’s fair housing enforcement agency, said Capital & Main’s findings “highlight a need for more education, more outreach and more enforcement”. Statewide, a single attorney and three investigators enforce anti-discrimination laws that protect people who use rental assistance, Kish noted.

“I think that we’re using all of the tools available to us,” Kish said. He added: “That’s the hard limit on what we can do. Those are the resources we have to conduct enforcement.”

But as Capital & Main’s testers learned through dozens of calls, emails and texts, housing laws on paper don’t necessarily make it easier for Section 8 tenants to get to yes, especially when it’s in big landlords’ financial interest to say no.

This reporting was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Annakai Hayakawa Geshlider, Arlen Levy, Jeremy Lindenfeld, Maison Tran, Emily Elena Dugdale and Lita Martinez contributed to this story. 
Copyright 2025 Capital & Main.