Finding a home in Lincoln has never been simple for Shawn Fauver.

That’s because since 2013 Fauver has relied on federal housing vouchers, or Section 8, which expire if not used within 90 days. And as Fauver learned, not all landlords take Section 8.

“I was already in a home when I received a Section 8 (voucher), so my landlord took on the Section 8,” he said. “But then he sold it, and the new landlords kicked me out.”

Since then, Fauver has had to contend with consistent housing instability and limited options — and he’s far from alone. A 2024 analysis by the Flatwater Free Press found nearly 30% of housing vouchers in Lincoln expired before they could be used.

Stories like Fauver’s helped inspire a ballot initiative to block Lincoln landlords from discriminating against tenants based on their lawful source of income. Nearly 67% of voters approved the measure in May.

But nearly two months after the vote, opponents are considering a two-pronged strategy: a lawsuit to strike down Lincoln’s ban and a bill in the Legislature — which recently moved to weaken multiple voter-approved initiatives — to bar other Nebraska cities from adopting a similar measure.

The approach mirrors a playbook already successfully executed in other states, with Missouri set to become the latest.

“We’re pursuing the idea of challenging this in court on Fourth Amendment grounds,” said Ryan Norman, head of the Apartment Association of Nebraska’s legislative committee.

The association and other opponents argue the bans are both unconstitutional and impractical.

“The problem is, if you’re not set up and trained and large enough … to run an effective program that takes Section 8, it’s really, really burdensome to take it,” he said. “There’s a lot of red tape that they have to walk through.”

Meanwhile, supporters say they’re ready for any challenge. Housing advocates are informing renters of their new rights, and they’re on the lookout for any hiccups with implementation.

“We are prepared to fight to uphold the will of the voters,” said Elizabeth Engman, a community organizer with the advocacy organization Collective Impact Lincoln.

And already, tenants are turning to the newly established protections. As of July 1, the Lincoln Commission on Human Rights had five cases on file, according to Jamie Reyes, the commission’s director.

City Versus State

Over the last decade, change has swept across Missouri.

It started with St. Louis in 2015. Webster Groves came next in 2019, followed by Columbia in 2023.

In August 2024, Kansas City, Missouri’s largest city, became the latest blue dot in the red state to enforce source-of-income protections, including for Section 8.

The lawsuit came two months later. It challenged the constitutionality of Kansas City’s protections, arguing in part that requiring landlords to accept vouchers is unconstitutional.

In February, a federal judge ruled in favor of the landlords who filed the lawsuit and granted a preliminary injunction halting enforcement of the ordinance for Section 8. And in May, Missouri lawmakers passed a bill prohibiting any cities from passing source-of-income protections. The bill awaits the governor’s signature.

Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky and Texas have adopted similar legislation. Several of those state laws, like Missouri’s, came after property owners sued to block a local ban on housing income discrimination.

Megan Hatch, an associate professor at Cleveland State University who researches state preemptions, said more conservative legislatures have an increased likelihood of preempting affordable housing policies passed by their state’s Democratic cities.

“It does have to do with their ideology and feelings of what …a local government should and shouldn’t do, and what interests are most important,” Hatch said.

Nebraska lawmakers have already outlawed other housing policies at the local level. Earlier this year, lawmakers voted to prohibit cities from placing rent controls on private properties.

That bill was introduced by Sen. Rob Dover of Norfolk, a real estate entrepreneur and Republican who was appointed to the Legislature in 2022. Dover has shepherded several pieces of housing-related legislation past the finish line — and he’s open to carrying a bill to preempt bans like Lincoln’s.

“These things should not be forced on people,” Dover said, referencing landlords’ participation in the federal housing voucher program. “They should be mutually agreed upon by both parties.”

Dover’s own property management company accepts federal housing vouchers, but he said requiring participation could hurt mom-and-pop landlords, who can’t afford staff to help navigate the program requirements.

Dover drew a connection between the housing income ban and several other voter-approved measures that have been a source of controversy in the Legislature.

In the past three years, Nebraska voters passed measures increasing the minimum wage and requiring private employers to provide paid sick leave. Lawmakers earlier this year scaled back who qualifies for paid sick leave and came one vote short of tempering future minimum wage increases.

“I don’t want to say anything bad about the general public on ballot initiatives, but what sounds really good on a ballot initiative, it’s usually drafted in a way to get signatures,” Dover said. “It sounds wonderful, it sounds fair, it sounds just. The arguments of both sides are not written there.”

Engman, the community organizer who gathered signatures for the Lincoln initiative, said the issue was more about dispelling myths surrounding Section 8 tenants. Many people who had initial reservations, she said, came around to support the ordinance after hearing about tenants’ struggles and seeing data on the issue.

Organizers have been hard at work getting the word out since the ordinance passed.

The Lincoln Commission on Human Rights has updated its materials to include source of income as a new kind of discrimination — and they’re training landlords and tenants alike to recognize it.

“We’ve met and become friends with so many people who have been impacted by this, and now have those protections,” Engman said. “I cried thinking of these families that now have stability they didn’t have before.”

Legal Challenges

In order to accept federal housing vouchers, landlords must sign a contract that requires information about the unit and the tenant, outlines terms of the lease and specifies landlord responsibilities.

It also grants the local public housing agency and federal housing department full access to the rental and the right to examine or audit relevant records.

Those requirements are fine when they’re voluntary, Norman said. But when they’re mandatory, he said, that’s when it becomes a violation of the Fourth Amendment barring unlawful search and seizure.

“I believe … and this is the Apartment Association’s stance as well, that the ordinance in Lincoln and similar attempts of passing a state law violate the Fourth Amendment,” Norman said.

That relatively new argument has found success elsewhere.

In 2023, New York State Supreme Court Justice Mark G. Masler found in part that “the source of income antidiscrimination statute necessarily compels landlords to consent to warrantless searches of their properties, in violation of the Fourth Amendment,” and deemed the portion of the law protecting Section 8 in New York as unconstitutional.

The same argument held weight in Missouri, where U.S. District Judge Roseann A. Ketchmark granted the preliminary injunction against Kansas City’s source-of-income protections.

“Landlords … fear that the ordinance will be used against them should they deny a Section 8 tenant,” Ketchmark wrote. “In this way, the ordinance is already harming their freedom to exercise their Fourth Amendment rights.”

Charting A New Path

An unexpected eviction in late July sent Elizabeth Ramirez scrambling to find a new home. The Lincoln mother of four had put down a deposit for a place only to have the offer rescinded when the eviction showed up on her record.

Ramirez first shared her story with the Flatwater Free Press shortly before her 2024 eviction. 

It wasn’t until mid-October that she found a landlord willing to give her a chance. While relieved to have a home, it hasn’t delivered the comfort or security she believes she could find if more options were available.

The house is far from her kids’ school, making getting to class on time difficult. The other families in the neighborhood aren’t always friendly, making trips to the local park a fraught affair. In one instance, a group of boys shot her daughter with a gel pellet gun. Frustrated, her daughter grabbed the toy gun. 

“Next thing you know, she was getting snatched up by her hood, and like six boys held her and beat her up,” Ramirez said. “And then another kid was holding my son, so that he couldn’t do anything. It was traumatic.”

Ramirez plans to look for a new home in September. She feels obligated to find a better situation for her family. Her eviction has been dismissed from her rental record, and she’s looking at a market that, thanks to the source-of-income protections, has more options for her family than ever before.

“They’ll probably miss their friends that they’ve already made, and it sucks, but I gotta think of our safety and their safety and comfortability,” she said. “And I shouldn’t have to already give them a crash course in street life.”

If landlords keep closing the door when she tries to pay with a housing voucher, Ramirez is ready to file a complaint.

Reyes, the human rights director, said source-of-income complaints follow the same administrative process as any other housing discrimination case.

An investigator will interview both the complainant and the landlord, request additional documentation or interview other witnesses, and explore the possibility of mediation or settlement. Cases head to the nine-member Lincoln Commission on Human Rights, which receives an investigative report and issues a ruling on the complaint.

Their rulings on the initial five complaints could help set precedent for how source-of-income discrimination cases are handled in the city.

For Fauver, the cycle of instability settled down two years ago, when he found his current apartment.

“I’ve been there two years, doing all right, getting by,” he said. “I’m lucky.”

But he holds some skepticism that Lincoln’s new protections — if they survive — will provide the intended benefits.

“It’s great, but landlords have money, and they can get around it,” Fauver said. “Landlords have lawyers, and they will still deny you. Landlords will be landlords.”

This story was originally published by Flatwater Free Press, an independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories in Nebraska that matter. Read the article at: https://flatwaterfreepress.org/landlords-planning-legal-challenge-to-lin...