Michigan Senate Committee Holds Hearing on Source of Income Protection Bills
Jessilyn Averill
Staff from the Fair Housing Center of Southeast and Mid-Michigan testifies in front of members on the Michigan Senate Housing and Human Services Committee, May 16, 2023.
The Michigan Senate Housing and Human Services Committee held its first hearing on 3 source of income (SOI) nondiscrimination bills on May 16th. This is encouraging news! The WHA, Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness (MCAH), Coalition for Expanding Housing Access (CEHA), and many other partners across the state have been advocating for a committee hearing since the bills were introduced earlier this year.
Senate bills 205, 206, and 207 would amend the Landlord Tenant Act and the Elliott Larsen Civil Rights Act to prohibit housing discrimination on the basis of a legal source of income (i.e. housing choice vouchers and other non-wage sources of income). Under current state law, there is no clear prohibition against a landlord refusing to accept Housing Choice Vouchers (HCVs), veterans’ benefits, alimony, MDHHS cash assistance, SSI/SSDI as part of a person’s legal total combined income. These sources of income are many times what tenants, who earn low to no income, need when applying to rent a house or apartment in the neighborhood or community of their choice.
According to the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development's (HUD) 2022 state data for Michigan, 65,248 HCVs help households in every Michigan county afford a safe place to live and Michigan landlords earn over $706 million annually from HCVs households.
As of May 2023, only 10 municipalities in our state have established SOI protections that prohibit discrimination against renters based on the source(s) of their income. The municipalities with SOI protections in Washtenaw County are the cities of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti.
Michigan renters need these protections across the state and the Senate committee hearing is one step forward to getting these bills passed in this legislative session. We will continue to share updates on the bills in upcoming newsletters as well as on our Current Advocacy page.
To help advocate the passing of these bills, CEHA has created fact sheets providing background information on why it’s important to protect source of income in Michigan.
Recently, the Michigan League for Public Policy (MLPP) published a report and factsheet on why Michigan children deserve housing, environmental, and education justice (spoiler: increasing access and use of housing choice vouchers would have a positive impact especially for families with young children). Separately, an opinion piece ran in the Detroit Free Press on why renters need source of income protection in Michigan's state law.