Supervisors Seek Change to Housing Discrimination Law

Milwaukee County Courthouse. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

The Milwaukee County Board lacks clarity on the county’s ability to enforce a local housing discrimination ordinance.

The board will likely seek a formal opinion from the state Attorney General’s office on the county’s authority to enforce a local ban on housing voucher discrimination.

At issue are federal Section 8 housing vouchers, which guarantee recipients they will not have to spend more than 30-40% of their income on rent. When recipients are denied a lease, it’s considered housing voucher discrimination. In Milwaukee County, where housing voucher recipients are predominantly people of color, it takes on a form of racial discrimination.

The county board passed an ordinance in 2018 banning voucher discrimination. However, the enforcement mechanism laid out in the law has proven overburdensome or simply ineffective. The result: the county has not managed to prevent a single case of housing discrimination since the ordinance was passed.

In 2023, as the board began to grapple again with the persistence of housing voucher discrimination, the county’s attorneys told supervisors state law may not allow the county to enforce a housing discrimination ordinance. The informal opinion pointed to a 1995 decision in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that found state laws concerning housing discrimination do not protect renters using Section 8 Housing Vouchers unless vouchers are specifically enumerated in the statute as a “lawful source of income.”

The board’s Committee on Health Equity, Human Needs and Strategic Planning unanimously approved a resolution sponsored by Sup. Shawn Rolland Wednesday seeking a formal opinion from the Attorney General and also calling for a change in state law to include section 8 housing vouchers as a “lawful source of income” in state statute.

Sup. Ryan Clancy, who is also a state representative, has drafted legislation at the state level to make the changes to state law requested in the county board’s resolution. Once the full board passes the resolution Clancy said he will circulate his state legislation for co-sponsorship.

“This should not be a partisan issue, and yet, the idea of equally applying the law to landlords is a tough one to get past our state house,” Clancy said. “So we will need some support in this.”

If the law is changed, the county board will likely still have to rework its own ordinance and probably fund a new county office focused on housing discrimination.

Under the 2018 ordinance, residents needed to file a notarized complaint with the county to trigger the enforcement process. Zero complaints were filed. Sup. Rolland has criticized this part of the ordinance, calling it an “onerous” barrier for a low-income person struggling to fund housing.

The county’s former corporation counsel, Margaret Daun, has advised the board that effective enforcement would require more than simply fining a few landlords and that the county would likely need a team of dedicated investigators and attorneys focused on the problem.

The full board will vote on the resolution later this month, which is expected to easily pass.