When Tisha Guthrie learned in 2009 that she’d received a housing voucher that would help with her rent in Baltimore, she was excited. She’d joined the waiting list five years prior, when she became unable to work full-time due to serious health issues (she received both kidney and pancreas transplants, and is also legally blind).

Yet Guthrie, now 45 years old, found that none of the apartments where she applied would accept her voucher. She inquired at nearly 20 buildings that advertised apartments in her price range. But whenever she mentioned her voucher, landlords said they didn’t take them, or that they didn’t have any apartments available.

“You start to feel defeated,” Guthrie told me. “You feel you’re being stigmatized based solely on having this form of rental payment.” She searched for a year before she finally found a landlord who would take her voucher.

Guthrie’s experience is all too common. Federally funded vouchers like hers (called housing choice vouchers) provided more than 2.2 million households and 5 million people with rental assistance in 2018. The vouchers help make housing affordable for low-income individuals: Voucher holders pay 30 percent of their income toward rent and utilities, while the government pays the remainder (up to the maximum allowable amount).

Yet in major cities from Los Angeles to New York City to Philadelphia to Chicago — and in many smaller ones, too — voucher holders often encounter landlords who refuse to take them or find other ways to avoid renting to them, including falsely claiming that they have no available apartments.

In response, states and cities have passed legislation known as “source-of-income laws,” which ban landlords from discriminating against people just because they’re using a voucher. Last year, Guthrie joined advocacy groups pushing for a source-of-income law in Baltimore, testifying about her experience and writing an op-ed. In 2019, the city passed such a law, albeit with a limitation that advocates opposed.

At the same time, it’s become clear that these laws are not enough. In some places, discrimination against voucher holders remains common, even with source-of-income laws on the books. Advocates argue that greater enforcement is needed, along with further adjustments to put voucher amounts more in line with fair market rents. And in cities with tight rental markets, they are pushing for increased construction of affordable housing.

A strong body of research shows that housing vouchers help prevent homelessness, as well as increase long-term health and economic outcomes of children in low-income families. Vouchers are of huge importance to millions of people, but discrimination against people who use them threatens to thwart the progress that’s been made in housing the most vulnerable among us.

Read the full article about discrimination against housing vouchers by Stephanie Wykstra at Vox.