In Fort Worth, a housing voucher doesn鈥檛 guarantee anyone a place to live. In fact, the housing voucher denial rate in the city is as high as 78%, .
Fort Worth is looking to address this issue with an amendment to the city鈥檚 Human Relations Ordinance that would prohibit housing discrimination on the basis of income for veterans with vouchers and for city-incentivized projects that include a housing component.
City Council will vote to approve the language on March 19. The city鈥檚 Human Relations Commission recommended the amendment 7-0 during its March 4 meeting.
The subject was raised during the city鈥檚 on homelessness on Feb. 13.
Council member Elizabeth Beck, who is a veteran, told the Fort Worth Report it鈥檚 important the city gets ahead of homelessness by preventing it.
鈥淭he two proposed changes would allow us to do that while also supporting our veteran population in a meaningful way. What that means as a city leader is looking at every policy and finding the places where we can do more to support both housing efforts and our veteran community,鈥� Beck said in a statement.
State law prohibits cities and counties from passing ordinances that prohibit source of income discrimination except in two cases: veterans and using incentives to encourage voucher acceptance.
Fort Worth鈥檚 new proposed ordinance will rely on those two exceptions, said Fernando Costa, assistant city manager.
鈥淭hose two exceptions provide us with some ability to prevent such discrimination, but the state law plainly gives property owners broad discretion as to the selection of their tenants,鈥� Costa said.
If passed by council, landlords in the city would no longer be able to turn away veterans looking to rent while using any sort of federal housing aid. The ordinance would also require all projects that include housing and receive any kind of city incentives to accept all types of tenants, regardless of source of income.
There would be no opt-out option, Costa said.
鈥淚f the developer is receiving public benefits in the form of an economic development agreement, tax abatement, anything that would constitute a public incentive by the state law, then we will contractually expect them to not discriminate on the basis of tenants鈥� source of income,鈥� he said.
Beck described this new rule as 鈥渁 win on several levels.鈥�
Mary-Margaret Lemons is the president of Fort Worth Housing Solutions. The housing authority supports any measure that protects against income discrimination, she said in a statement to the Fort Worth Report.
鈥淲e understand the challenges families and veterans face with finding a home in Fort Worth鈥檚 tight rental market, and welcome the city encouraging the acceptance of vouchers by landlords,鈥� Lemons said in an email.
The city of Austin is the only municipality in Texas that already had an ordinance banning source of income discrimination that was grandfathered in after .
鈥淢y understanding is that other states have been more permissive about what (cities) can do. Texas effectively has preempted cities on this issue, as the legislature has done on many issues, and severely restricted our ability to enact regulations that serve our interests,鈥� Costa said.
However, the state recently passed a law in 2023 that prohibits homeowners associations from discriminating against renters who .
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Sandra Sadek is a Report for America corps member, covering growth for the Fort Worth Report. You can contact her at sandra.sadek@fortworthreport.org or