Kansas City Housing providers win Preliminary Injuction over the Source Of Income Ordinance.

A federal judge blocked the Kansas City Missouri Source Of Income Ordinance that required housing providers to not discriminate against potential renters based on their source of income.  The injunction pertains to housing vouchers only.

The City has not stopped all enforcement of source of income discrimination investigations related to housing voucher recipients.

From Attorney Doug Stone

“I certainly won’t dispute that we have a homelessness problem in Kansas City, but I think it’s probably a little more accurate to say not that there are 17,000 people with vouchers looking for units, but there are 17,000 people on the waiting list to receive a voucher,”

“It’s not just ‘Hey, here’s my voucher can I live here?’ I, actually, as a landlord, I have to now become part of a program, allow my records to be open to inspection by the federal government, all of my business records. I chose not to do that. The federal government doesn’t make me do that. It’s a voluntary program. It’s not right for the City to make me join a federal program that requires me to waive my rights,”

“We’re gratified agreed with us,” said attorney Doug Stone, a partner at Lewis Rice Law Firm that represents the landlords. “That’s the reason the court did what it did. The court came to the conclusion that, much as we had asserted, that forcing a landlord into a program at the federal level that is otherwise a voluntary program is not an appropriate obligation to impose. Being in the program means I have to waive any requirement that the government get a warrant to search my business records, which is one of the things that you waive when you become a Section 8 landlord. It runs afoul of my client’s constitutional rights.”

“We pointed the council to other programs around the country that had an impact on the number of landlords accepting Section 8 vouchers, but that wasn’t coercive in nature like the city ordinance was,” said Stone. “In fact, we literally pointed them across the state line.”  (referring to the incentive program attracting housing providers in Johnson County)