While there are certainly troublesome tenants on the list, housing advocates say its use by landlords exacerbates the affordable housing crisis in New York, putting apartments further out of reach for poor people.

“There are a lot of tenants who are terrified of complaining or of withholding rent because they are afraid of getting on these blacklists,” said James B. Fishman, a lawyer who has settled two class-action lawsuits against tenant-screening companies.

Like most housing court cases, Ms. Miller’s is complicated. She owed back rent. Her daughter’s name, not hers, was on the lease. But the apartment also had holes in the ceiling, a bathroom leak and no cooking gas for months. Ms. Miller said that she agreed to leave in early 2014 because she was scared to stay, and that she moved out shortly after a final eviction notice. She said she had no idea that her decision might doom her in her search for a new apartment.

“It’s taken my life away from me,” Ms. Miller, an artist who goes by the name Lumiere, said. She has been staying at the convent, but the people who run it want her to find a new home. “Virtually taking my life away,” she added. “My health is affected, everything is affected. It’s inhumane.”

A spokesman for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which provides the subsidies for older adults in the Prince Hall Plaza building, said the agency does not refuse people with prior evictions. But the owners of apartment buildings receiving subsidies, who sign contracts with the agency, can use their own screening tools.

Lorraine Carrington, who signed the original letter from Prince Hall Plaza and who Ms. Miller said claimed that the housing agency would not accept tenants with evictions, said she knew Ms. Miller but declined to comment.