Tens of thousands of Chicago-area residents rely on federal rental assistance through the Housing Choice Voucher program, often referred to as Section 8, to help pay for rent in the private market.
But there are potentially thousands more low-income renters who are being illegally turned away.
While local and state laws bar landlords from discriminating against voucher holders, recent discrimination complaints and lawsuits have shown the legislation hasn’t moved the needle. One in every three Chicago-area landlords approached during a monthslong investigation last year told prospective tenants they don’t accept Section 8. And some voucher holders say it is routine to encounter landlords who say they don’t participate in the program.
“Oh, I’ve been told we don’t take [housing choice vouchers] hundreds of times,” said Laura Hasselquist, a 20-year Chicago resident who has used housing choice vouchers to rent apartments in the past. Landlords have often told her “‘No, we don’t take Section 8,’ ” she said.
Renters using vouchers in the private market pay a portion of their monthly rent based on their income, with the federal subsidy making up the difference. There are limits to the amount covered by the subsidy based on local rent prices and unit size.
Though Hasselquist has never filed a lawsuit or complaint, some voucher holders and advocacy groups have in recent months.
In April, with help from HOPE Fair Housing Center and Northside Community Resources, four women sued a Chicago realty company alleging source of income discrimination. HOPE filed a similar lawsuit in December.
“I received my moving papers two weeks before the birth of my son, so I immediately started reaching out about listings to schedule tours of apartments,” said Nancyann Adams, in a statement. Adams is a voucher holder and one of the plaintiffs in the April lawsuit. “I toured a unit that I loved, asked the agent for an application, followed up several times and never heard back from him. I ended up giving birth to my son while still trying to find an apartment — it was a really stressful time.”
Housing Rights Initiative (HRI), a nonprofit that educates tenants about housing rights, filed 176 complaints with the Illinois Department of Human Rights (IDHR) in January, revealing a possible pattern of source of income discrimination.
The IDHR investigates allegations of discrimination as defined by the Illinois Human Rights Act. A 2022 amendment to that law added “source of income” as a basis for discrimination. The amendment, enacted in January 2023, makes it illegal for any housing provider in Illinois to deny a tenant solely based on how they pay for rent.
According to the HRI complaints, multiple property management companies and property owners turned away prospective tenants once they found out the would-be renters intended to use vouchers. In all, 165 defendants were named in the mass filing, which the watchdog group claims to be the largest housing discrimination complaint in state history.
The filing resulted from an investigation it conducted in the Chicago area last year. HRI identified properties in dozens of locations, mostly in suburban Cook County, and tested whether landlords or property management companies would agree to lease to prospective tenants with vouchers.
For each property, the group deployed two “testers,” individuals posing as renters, to contact the landlords or property managers via text messages.
Both testers individually contacted the same landlord or broker and asked if an apartment was available. One tester informed the landlord of the voucher and the other did not.
“If they tell the person who said they have a voucher ‘No, we don’t take vouchers’ and they tell the other person that the apartment is available, then that’s pretty clear evidence of discrimination,” said Emily Roznowski, a staff attorney with the Disability Rights Advocates, a nonprofit legal center representing the HRI.
In a text message from March 13 last year, an HRI tester asked an agent with a real estate company, “and we do have a section 8 voucher, could we use that here?”
The agent responded: “Someone inquired before with a Voucher and the owner prefers not to work with section 8. Sorry!”
A second HRI tester individually contacted the same agent via text but did not indicate source of income. The agent answered the person’s questions and offered to show the property later that week, according to HRI’s investigation.
The testers contacted 195 properties in all. Of those, 72 (roughly 37%) said they don’t accept vouchers, according to a WBEZ analysis of data from the results of the HRI investigation. The remaining 123 landlords (roughly 63%) said vouchers would be accepted or they did not outright deny the investigator.
The WBEZ analysis also shows that landlords were more likely to reject vouchers in ZIP codes with higher percentages of white or affluent residents.
Lack of legal understanding
Sources say some landlords may not fully understand the extent of laws protecting voucher holders from source-of-income discrimination.
In 2022, Paul Arena, the director of legislative affairs for the Illinois Rental Property Owners Association, voiced his opposition to the legislation amending the Illinois Human Rights Act and making source of income a basis for discrimination. Arena still maintains his views that the housing choice voucher program is voluntary.
“There’s this interpretation of state law that some would say you have to participate in the program, but the program is designed to be voluntary. So, these conditions that you’re having to agree to are intended to be at your own choice,” said Arena, a landlord for 35 years who is based in Winnebago County and owns seven properties totaling 68 apartment units.
He says Illinois law is “hostile” toward property owners and favorable toward tenants.
“The negativity towards us and the challenges that people perceive for being a housing provider, those types of attitudes existing out there only discourage more people from getting into the business,” he said. “I’m always hearing the people who are just sick of it, and they’re moving on.”
Another landlord, Jeff Weinberg, president and founder of Drexel Properties in Chicago, said housing providers don’t intentionally discriminate on the source of income. Instead, it’s a lack of education.
“Section 8 tenants are not bad people or bad residents or bad neighbors. They just have a different source of income, and I would rather see people focusing on [making] sure that housing providers understand the law so that they’re not making these mistakes, so the tenants are protected,” said Weinberg, who has rented properties for 23 years and serves as a board member of the Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance. “We’re making sure that housing providers, the small ones who don’t necessarily know the law, understand that a Section 8 voucher is a source of income. Source of income is a protected class.”
Lawyers advocating for tenants rights and one of the lawmakers who sponsored the state law protecting voucher holders say they’ve spoken directly to landlords who simply didn’t understand the law.
In some instances when a voucher holder has been rejected, attorneys and advocacy groups may contact the landlord on behalf of the prospective tenant to avoid legal escalation.
MacKenzie Speer, fair housing program counsel with the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, said they may say something along the lines of, “Would you consider reversing your decision because your basis for denying this person housing is illegal and discriminatory?”
State Rep. LaShawn Ford, who sponsored the 2022 bill granting source-of-income protections, said some landlords are oblivious to the law.
“I’ve called places and they flat out said, ‘We don’t take Section 8,’ ” Ford said. “I just wanted to test it, and they actually failed the test, but you know, that’s because they didn’t know.”
Individuals with housing choice vouchers might also be unaware of the laws or the actions they can take to challenge landlords who reject vouchers.
Those who do know of the legal protections might be more immediately focused on securing housing than fighting discrimination. In some jurisdictions, tenants with a voucher must secure a unit within 90 days.
“If a family can’t find a unit within that window, they lose the voucher,” said Roznowski of the Disability Rights Advocates. “That kind of source of income discrimination can ultimately result in a family losing access to their housing assistance altogether.”
Voucher holders who believe they’ve faced discrimination can contact the Civil Rights Bureau of the Illinois Attorney General’s Office or file a complaint with the Illinois Department of Human Rights. In addition to state law, the Chicago Fair Housing Ordinance also identifies “source of income” as a protected class and allows alleged victims of discrimination to file complaints with the Chicago Commission on Human Relations.
If the IDHR finds that discrimination occurred, the landlord could face up to a $16,000 fine for a first violation and $42,500 for a second violation within five years. That penalty increases to $70,000 per violation for additional occurrences within seven years.
“The civil penalty can deter housing providers from repeatedly rejecting applicants because of their source of income, particularly for people who use Housing Choice Vouchers,” the IDHR said in a statement to WBEZ.
Landlords can face lawsuits if they don’t follow the law, intentionally or unintentionally.
“They could be sued for housing discrimination,” Ford said. “I don’t think landlords would do it if they knew that they were breaking the law.”
A ‘legacy of racial discrimination’
Even if some landlords lack awareness of the legal protections, fair housing advocates said the rejection of vouchers is often the result of conscious racial bias.
In Chicago, 89% of individuals using housing choice vouchers are Black, according to 2024 data from the Chicago Housing Authority.
“We really think of all our discrimination [cases] as part of the legacy of racial discrimination, and the housing program is still majority Black in Chicago, and it’s mostly Black women,” said Speer with the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, which has represented voucher holders in court.
State Rep. Ford said source-of-income discrimination is linked to racial discrimination. He pointed to Chicago’s history of segregation.
“That’s because Chicago has always had communities that relegated certain populations to certain parts of the city,” Ford said. “That’s the history of Chicago, a segregated city. Recently, we see more integration across the city, but there are still some parts of Chicago that are very segregated.”
“Landlords should have the right to qualify people for their units, and race should not be one of the qualifiers,” he added.
Last year, the Chicago Housing Authority administered 41,000 housing choice vouchers, and the Housing Authority of Cook County issued more than 13,000 vouchers, according to data obtained by WBEZ.
The vast majority of those vouchers were concentrated in majority-Black ZIP codes on Chicago’s South and West sides and in south suburban Cook County.
“I feel sorry for some of these young moms and young dads who are out there,” said Hasselquist, who rented apartments for years using a housing choice voucher in the private rental market.
It’s been hard finding places to rent in North Side neighborhoods, she said. “It’s become very clear to me why, when you look for a Section 8 apartment, it is so pocketed in certain areas with certain racial makeup and economic makeup.”
Currently, Hasselquist rents a unit in a North Side apartment building utilizing project-based vouchers, where federal rent subsidies are provided directly to the units for income-eligible renters.
Hasselquist is white, but she has witnessed the racial discrimination her biracial son has faced.
“When I moved into this building, my landlord was like, ‘I don’t want any trouble from your son,’ ” Hasselquist said. “The only reason my landlord said what he said about my son and not getting in trouble in his building is because my son is biracial with long dreadlocks.”
“Don’t discriminate against my son because of the way he looks,” she said.
“But I can’t even imagine being a Black mother with Black children trying to get my kids in a safer area on the North Side,” Hasselquist said. “I can imagine the doors are just shut constantly.”
Ashley Soriano is a data intern with WBEZ.