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.
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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.
Craig Chandler/University Communication
“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.”
32 Comments
I think this is a major issue across Nebraska. Low income people are discriminated against and stereotyped. Have NOT been able to find a decent place to live in Kearney, Ne and if you mention voucher Landlords don’t want to hassle with it or they’ve said that “those type of tenants don’t take care of the place” I was outraged! My sibling was a truck driver most his life and had always worked. He had a bad accident years ago and became disabled. He was receiving SSDI when His home he owned was gutted due to a fire. He lost everything and no insurance. He got a housing voucher 3 years ago and only place available was an old trailer. It was approved with holes in walls going to outside, ceiling leaking, mold, bad floor boards, no air cond. I could go on and on. Been looking for a year to help him find different place and keep getting turned down. Don’t know what direction to go. So glad you posted this article. I want to pursue the issue!
Any landlord makes a decision. Slum lord or not. Look in NY places like Saratoga springs ny love to tote don’t care who vote blue, we want to have more programs. When a developer tried to put low income housing in downtown, there was hysteria. The crime, the change of our downtown…. Wealthy areas do not want to have any problems in there section of town, they are glad to help, ie Martha’s Vineyard, when the illegals were bused in, they helped, they helped move them out. Sorry but people who are wealthy do not want poor around d there kids, homes, or places.
Everybody is sympathetic to low income people. However landlords have a right to regulate their own property, I know this falls on deaf ears too many liberals. The long-term question is how long will they remain low income, what will they do to achieve a higher standard of living on their own volition rather than depending on government funding their entire lives. Sometimes multigenerational.
Why should I be forced to accept any type of voucher against my will. Maybe I don’t like dealing with the government and all their BS. Cash or money order only.
Perhaps the right of folks to have a place to live is of greater concern than your ability to discriminate on worthiness of people needing a place to call home. If you own more housing than you and your family need, you have signed up for a responsibility to ensure others have a good place to live in the excess.
If you don’t want to take the risk and mess with compliance, there are many other ways to make a profit. Sell the housing to someone that will use it and pursue those other avenues.
You are completely wrong in your assessment. If I buy a rental home to make money and provide a future for my children what gives anyone the right to say I have to rent to anyone? I have the right to rent to whoever I choose. Why should their rights trample on mine? And to say that he shouldn’t sell it to someone else is absurd. Who are you to judge him for trying to build a retirement or inheritance for his family. People buy real estate for investment purposes. If you’re so inclined to help people you should go out and invest your own money to make a home for them. When it’s your money we will see how much you cry about being fair. Fair is I invest my money to make a living and I make the decision on who I rent to and who I don’t. Plain and simple. I have rights too. Mine shouldn’t be trumped by someone else’s opinion on rights.
Dude, if you can afford to buy a property at all, even if you’re paying it off for a while, you’re clearly starting out from a place of privilege. Thus, I will repeat what Prairie Progressive said: “Perhaps the right of folks to have a place to live is of greater concern.” 😐
Absolutely ridiculous. I have the right to rent to whoever I choose. I worked for my money to invest in a rental and you think that the rights of someone Trump my rights as a landlord. It’s my money invested and that doesn’t mean I am responsible for making sure everyone has a home. I’m investing in my future. I’m building a retirement for myself and my family. Why do my rights as a person who invested my money and my time not matter as much as your reasons to rent to someone? To tell me I should sell it to someone is absurd. The whole point of being a landlord is to invest and make money. You think the next guy is going to say sure I’ll take less money and more headaches. Sounds reasonable. Get off your soap box and be realistic about the world. You can’t force people to do anything with their own property. Just like you can’t force people to hire people. Everyone has rights and that means you can’t force yours over mine. Plain and simple.
“Perhaps the right of folks to have a place to live is of greater concern than your ability to discriminate on worthiness of people needing a place to call home.”
There is no such “right”, but nice try to create one. Your feelings about what constitutes a “right” is so cute, but does not mean anything of substance.
Tell you what PP, if you truly believe there is a “right to housing”, why don’t you provide it?
EXACTLY!!
You’re absolutely nuts thinking you can tell people what they have to do with their money/property.
So, not touched upon, the real reason this happened. Affordable housing. Over the last 5 years rents have increased by 50% if not more over town. Why? If one notices, apartment complexes have been built in very quadrant of the city with new ones being build every week. Sure supply and demand are causing some of the price increases, but in reality, and something the city and county government wouldn’t admit to, is the astronomical increase of property taxes for everyone. Go look. Just go to the County Accessors website and pick property. That increase isn’t eaten by the property owners, its by the renters through price increases, which price everyone out of good homes. So if you are needing someone to point a finger at on the why, go to city council and the county board and ask them.
Land Lords make money off of people who can’t afford to buy a home. If they can’t or won’t provide a decent and affordable place for people to live they are not fit to be a Land Lord
Not all landlords are slumlords. There are those who offer well maintained affordable places in descent neighborhoods. Not brand new by far, and not in gated neighborhoods either. But also not a $400 pos in the ghetto. Yeah they may make money off those of us not yet ready or willing to make the big move to home ownership. But they earned that. They spent their life making wise choices to invest their money for a better, more comfortable way of life for themselves and their kids. Maybe make good choices to better your life instead of blaming others for your difficulties.
Maybe that’s still a dirty way to make money, just saying.
They are building a retirement for themselves and their families. Why should they take less money and have more problems all because you think everyone is entitled to be able to rent their place? It’s absolutely ridiculous to say you think someone should be forced to rent to anyone other than their choosing. If you were a landlord and had people destroy the property a couple times or not pay rent and then courts kick them out you would be singing a different tune. My money my choice. End of story.
Jealous much?
I’ve been on both sides; I was a low income tenant and a property manager. While I KNOW. that Section 8 recipients are honestly usually BETTER tenants than those who pay privately, if for no other reason than they can lose their housing assistance if they aren’t, I chose not to accept Section 8 as a property manager.
I never wanted to turn away the tenants, but it was the PROGRAM I couldn’t deal with. The housing inspectors have a LOT of leeway when it comes to inspecting properties, and I’ve personally seen them require landlords to put out huge amounts of money to fix things that they wouldn’t usually do. I’m not talking about being a slumlord here, but imposing fines for a tiny crack in a light switch cover, or for the normal cracks in the sidewalk leading up to the building was not only ridiculous, but incredibly expensive. The paperwork to get approvals is massive and I sure didn’t know how to was through it. Fix the Section 8 SYSTEM and more landlords would have taken it in the first place and not be figuring it now.
Finally, I wonder if the Section 8 system doesn’t discriminate against their own clients. When you have money, YOU decide what it is that you and your family find acceptable in a property. When you’re on Section 8, Section 8 decides! “No, you can’t rent this property because the landlord hasn’t fixed the slightly cracked light switch cover or the cracks in the front sidewalk.”
Fix the SYSTEM – its not the tenants nor the landlords who are broken.
Fix the Section 8 SYSTEM, and more landlords would
I agree. As a landlord myself I don’t mind section 8 tenants and they wait years here to get on it so they really don’t want to loose it so rent is normally paid.
This issue is section 8. Let’s say I have a property that is city rental inspection certified. Usually in most cities around Michigan it’s inspected every two to.four years unless a complaint is made. So the city says I’m a good landlord and take care of my properties.
Miss smith applies and is approved and on section 8. We fill out the paperwork and wait a week to two weeks for them to inspect. They find a few minor things they want us to fix so we fix that day or the next and notify section 8 and now we wait again for them to reinspect. Another few days to a week go by and they finally approve and rent can start.
So on the VERY SHORT side this has taken two weeks. So on a 1500.00 a month house I just lost 750.00 compared to approving miss jones who is working and receives food stamps and welfare. I approve her and she moves in the next day.
Then after Miss smith has been there a year section 8 comes back and reinspects. (This is a true story this last winter) And they find a missing smoke detector in the basement (24 hour mandatory repair) and one post on the front porch has the aluminum trim torn loose. Kids bike or whatever last summer probably. Whatever no big deal. Now it’s January in Michigan but I send my maintenance guys over and they see the post itself isn’t in the greatest shape so I tell them just put a new treated post in don’t just wrap the old aluminum around a rotted post. New post is in and wasn’t even required but since the old one was wrapped in white aluminum and new one is a green treated post it was failed and rent stopped until it was fixed. So I don’t know this til I receive a letter in the mail figure out why the hell we didn’t pass and then send my maintenance over to PAINT A POST IN JANUARY WHITE! Again this takes two weeks because of not knowing until it arrives in the mail (no they won’t email) and figure out and fix. This is an OUTSIDE post in January! Didn’t affect tenant living conditions in the least but I just lost another 750.00 because you can’t charge the tenant for the time we were in violation! This was on a house I already had a city rental certificate and it was only the outside post in JANUARY! So now the the end of one year I’m out one months rent because of the initial wait time and an outside post in January.
If you ask my tenants I’m a decent landlord. Try to keep everything good. But if I loose a months rent every time I rent to a section 8 tenant I’m not really hunting for one. Would you?
Great response! Thank You for the perspective from more than one side.
It seems to me that there is an easy solution to this problem. One that is already on the books and fully practiced in every state and by local governments as well.
If landlords continue to refuse rent control or section eight vochers as a means to make affordable housing available, then there is only one option that remains that has lawfully used in the United States!
These states, at every level of government must turn to eminent domain in order to obtain land to create affordable housing!
You’re all absolutely ridiculous. I take my hard earned money to buy a house and start trying to make a retirement or inheritance for my family and you think that people are entitled to it or the government should enact eminent domain to create affordable housing? Who is going to pay for this? The government? So take away someone’s rights by stealing their property and then the government should fund the rent for the place for someone? Go hug a tree and quit crying. The world doesn’t owe you anything. Why should their government ie taxpayers pay for people’s lives? For anyone to say that I should be controlled and only be allowed to rent for a certain amount of money is beyond comprehension. I guess we should do this with Walmart, target, McDonald’s etc. tell them they can only sell their products for so much money because of lack of affordable products. It’s reverse discrimination against the home owners to be forced to rent to everyone. I used my own money to buy it I can say who I want or don’t want to rent to. You should be forced to let people use your car when you’re not using it. You don’t need it during the times that you aren’t driving. Something you paid for others should be allowed to tell you what you can do with it. See how stupid that sounds.
Nothing more UNAFFORDABLE than a city/county/state owning “affordable” housing! Come on, man!
Well it isn’t to seize property that isn’t used according to how someone thinks it should be. You’ll just find people will sell their property rather than be told what they should do with it.
This is definitely an issue for me too. I am a senior on a fixed income and disabled. I am poor but I should be able to live in a decent house/apartment and be able to afford it. I see all these new apartment buildings going up and what I would like to see happen is the developers should have to rent 10% of the apartments to people at 30% of their income. I think this would be a feasible idea.
My mom was in a similar spot. She lived with a friend and split expenses and her roommate decided to move and the landlord (not a property manager) let mom take over the lease. The landlord decided to sell the unit to a large property company, she was barely scraping by, her bathroom had mold, a rusty bathtub that was a hazard and when she finally got them to fix it, they increased her rent $250. She makes just enough to not qualify for assistance but not enough to find a place to live. She moved in with us. The wait-list for all of the assistance programs for housing are years long. So many things to fix and no agreed up on solutions.
Thank you for sharing your valuable input!
Anybody who would vote to say you can’t use income as a reason to approve or deny somebody staying in your property has no idea about economics. Lower income people are less likely to consistently pay the rent, and they are far more likely to destroy your property when they are living there and when they move out. I own approximately two dozen properties and I decide who stays in them. Not the voters.
If people like me, relying on Section 8 to survive, are desperate for a decent place to live, then we’re going to take good care of the place. Getting evicted is my absolute worst nightmare. So before you generalize an entire group of people’s behavior based on their low income, check the facts. Your ignorance is showing.
My family and I are newly facing eviction and homelessness. 90% of my household are elderly, on fixed income and I myself am disabled and on fixed income. Husband works, but it’s not much. Another problem is landlords not allowing flexible payment dates. All together the four adults in the house could make the rent, only the money never lined up with the due dates, then they get you with the late fees and make the situation unrecoverable. We asked for an adjusted rent-due date, but was told it was “impossible”. The section 8 list in my area is flat CLOSED. Like what are we supposed to do? How does one– or in my case 5, four adults and a child avoid becoming homeless? Answer, you don’t. We had to leave our rental in a hurry because of the impending eviction, we couldn’t take half of our belongings because there was no time or money to get a truck or even find a place to go… Now the landlords say we left it dirty, they kicked us out because we couldn’t control when our money came in. And worse now I have an eviction on me that will hurt us trying to get into a new place. It’s just not fair for folks who are struggling with health issues and just trying to wake up every day.
The only outcome of this nonsense will be to decrease the number of rental units in Lincoln.
Never let a socialist idea fool you: it always has the opposite effect.
Here’s wondering how supportive FFP will be when statewide voters approve common sense to block this crapola! Please stop with all the lawyer enriching schemes, and the belief that gubbermint is always the solution.