Milwaukee County landlords must consider renters with housing vouchers under new proposal

Milwaukee County landlords must consider leasing apartments to poor people who use government-issued housing vouchers under a new proposal pending before the County Board.

Supporters say the proposed ordinance, sponsored by Supervisor Marina Dimitrijevic, would help reduce racial segregation.

"A lot of folks who use vouchers are black and brown folks," said Margaret Daun, county corporation counsel.

Opponents, including officials from the Apartment Association of Southeastern Wisconsin Inc., acknowledged Milwaukee's status as one of the nation's most-segregated communities.

But they have concerns about the proposal, including the fact that the federal rent assistance voucher program requires landlords to provide apartments through one-year leases.

A lot of landlords rent their apartments through month-to-month leases, said Heiner Giese, the association's attorney.

Supporters and opponents spoke at a Monday hearing about the proposal before the board's Economic and Community Development Committee. The committee voted to delay acting on the proposal until its May meeting.

The ordinance would need full board approval.

It would not force landlords to rent apartments to people with vouchers if the tenants don't meet the landlord’s typical requirements, Dimitrijevic said.

For example, a landlord could refuse to rent an apartment it the tenant had a poor credit rating or a bad reference from another landlord. And the proposal doesn't restrict the rents that landlords can charge.

However, landlords couldn't treat tenants with vouchers differently from tenants without vouchers.

The rent assistance vouchers are funded through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Section 8 program. They cover 5,800 Milwaukee County households, according to the city Housing Authority, which helps operate the program.

Voucher amounts vary according to the number of people in a household. The current monthly limit for a two-bedroom apartment in Milwaukee County is $925.

Those levels should allow families to rent affordable apartments in such communities as South Milwaukee, Cudahy, Oak Creek and Wauwatosa, said Kori Schneider Peragine of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council.

But, Peragine said, some landlords will not accept the vouchers. And the resulting racial segregation limits the ability of people to succeed, she said.

Milwaukee is segregated, said Ron Hegwood, Apartment Association president.

But, he said, landlords have been demonized because of the actions of a relatively small group of "bad players."

Hegwood and another landlord, Robert Maas, also said the Section 8 program fails to hold tenants accountable when they damage apartments.

"The burden is put on us, with rent assistance," Maas said.

Tom Daykin can be emailed at tdaykin@jrn.com and followed on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.