BY: CLARA BATES
Missouri Independent

The legislation is a response to laws passed by several Missouri cities protecting tenants from discrimination based on the source of their income

Local laws prohibiting landlords from discriminating against tenants who receive public assistance would be unenforceable under legislation approved by the Missouri Senate Tuesday night.

The bill takes aim at ordinances passed in several Missouri cities to protect tenants from discrimination based on the source of their income — especially tenants who use federal housing choice vouchers, known as Section 8 vouchers, to pay rent. It now returns to the House, which approved it earlier this year. 

If the House approves of the changes made in the Senate, the bill would go to the governor.

The bill was co-sponsored by state Reps. Chris Brown, a Republican from Kansas City, and Ben Keathley, a Republican from Chesterfield. In the Senate, it was carried by state Sen. Nick Schroer, a Republican from Defiance. 

Schroer on Tuesday called the bill “a common sense piece of legislation that prioritizes property rights over radical government overreach.”

Brown in a March Senate committee hearing called it a “property rights bill.” 

“Basically what has happened is [cities] are forcing people to take Section 8 housing,” Brown said. “…I would submit this kind of amounts to an illegal appropriation of private property. But there’s a very practical reason why a landlord may not want to do Section 8 housing.”

Kansas City passed a source of income discrimination ban last year, though it was in large part paused by the courts in February. 

Columbia, St. Louis, Webster Groves and Clayton have similar protections on the books. The laws make it illegal for landlords to discriminate based solely on the fact of renters’ lawful sources of income, including Section 8, veterans’ benefits and Social Security.

State Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Kansas City Democrat, said Tuesday that the legislation would not only undo those local ordinances but exacerbate homelessness.

 “But really the fear for those who are the most vulnerable is that this would lead to further problems, expanding the homeless population,” she said

The bill to override these local policies passed the Senate after Democratic Sen. Patty Lewis of Kansas City successfully added an amendment to carve out the portions of Kansas City that are in Jackson and Clay counties. Democratic state Sen. Stephen Webber of Columbia also successfully added an amendment to allow those who receive veterans’ benefits to continue being protected from source-of-income based housing discrimination.

Proponents have characterized localities’ protections as overreach, forcing property owners’ hands. The bill has the support of landlords groups, apartment associations, the realtors’ association and the conservative think tank Show Me Institute.

During a hearing in January, Brown said proponents are “not unsympathetic to tenants that have some housing insecurities.

 “It’s not about the Section 8 tenant,” he said, “it’s about the program that we do not want to be forced into.” 

Not every property owner, he said, wants to undergo the bureaucratic hurdles to accept Section 8.

David Stokes, director of municipal policy at the Show Me Institute, said source of income discrimination bans are simply a “violation of the property rights of landlords.” 

Landlords, he said, shouldn’t be required to participate in a voluntary federal program.

“Just as the State of Missouri has long forbidden cities from imposing rent control,” he said, “this is just a very similar next step, and I think it will really benefit housing options and housing availability throughout Missouri.” 

In January’s hearing, Kansas City Councilman Johnathan Duncan emphasized that landlords under the ordinance can still screen tenants and deny individuals based on other reasons, just not for the sole basis of the source of their income. He said landlords could still deny applicants with violent criminal histories or low credit scores for instance. 

“I hope that representatives understand that we’re here to govern ourselves and definitely can pass our own laws,” Duncan said. “And I think it is an affront to the city of Kansas City and the other municipalities in the state of Missouri — that the state would know better than how we know and how to govern ourselves.” 

Opponents also said the bill could hurt affordable housing availability. The city of Kansas City has been opposed along with the anti-poverty nonprofit Empower Missouri and an association of public housing authorities in Missouri.

Mallory Rusch, executive director of Empower, said in the January hearing that the discrimination bans help vulnerable Missourians secure housing.

“Discrimination bans like the one passed in Kansas City and other places in the state are really a key tool for local governments to prevent homelessness and ensure that those with the least among us can put a roof over their heads,” she said, “and we really believe that the state should not be preventing local governments from enacting these provisions when they know their communities best.” 

Gavriel Schreiber, general counsel to Kansas City’s mayor, testified in March that the bill “targets some of our most respected citizens, veterans, seniors,” because those individuals who get most of their income from benefits often don’t have their benefits counted toward their rent-to-income ratio mandated by landlords.

“The ordinance says at its base that if you have a lawful source of income, a landlord cannot refuse to rent to you simply because they don’t like where you get your lawful money from,” Schreiber said. 

Dozens of states and localities nationally have these protections, which cover around 60% of families with Section 8 vouchers, according to the federal government. 

Enforcement in states and cities where the protections have been passed has been somewhat mixed, but studies have found that overall the protections modestly improve outcomes for voucher holders.