Jasmine Varela forgot she applied for a housing choice voucher until a letter arrived in 2023. After languishing on a waitlist for 14 years, she learned the city of Milwaukee’s housing authority would finally issue her a Section 8 voucher. She thought the rent subsidy would help her provide a better life to her four children. “I was excited because I thought I was going to get a nice house, more rooms for my kids and a better neighborhood,” she recalled. The news only kicked off a new challenge: trying to find a landlord who would accept the voucher before it expired in 120 days. The 36-year-old Walgreens employee found few willing landlords and few resources to help her pay upfront fees, such as the first month’s rent and security deposit. She went on to submit 50 rental applications, spending $1,275. Feeling desperate about 90 days into her quest, she put aside her pride and asked family for help. Do you have feedback on Milwaukee NNS's reporting? Take our survey to let us know how we're doing! She hoped to find a house closer to her children’s South Side Milwaukee school, but eventually found just one landlord, across town in Old North Milwaukee, who would accept the voucher and work with her credit history. Her mother worried about safety in the neighborhood, but Varela felt she had no choice but to sign the lease before her voucher would expire on Jan. 28. South Side Milwaukee landlords she encountered weren’t willing to accept voucher aid, Varela said, adding that several doubted they would pass inspections required by the program. Section 8, the federal government’s largest low-income housing subsidy program, serves 2.3 million households nationwide, including more than 16,500 people in Milwaukee County in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). It aims to broaden housing access for participants, but renters and housing advocates say landlords outside of historically disinvested neighborhoods rarely rent to people with vouchers — one of many factors limiting opportunities in Milwaukee and nationwide, particularly people of color. Milwaukee County in 2018 banned landlords from categorically rejecting recipients of housing assistance. More than five years later the county’s Office of Corporation Counsel, which is supposed to enforce the protections, says it has yet to receive a verified complaint of such discrimination. That’s not for a lack of discrimination, a Wisconsin Watch investigation found. Some landlords continue to explicitly reject Section 8 applicants — even saying so in public listings. Four Section 8 renters told Wisconsin Watch no one informed them about the protections or how to file a complaint. Milwaukee County and the city of Milwaukee operate separate housing agencies that distribute Section 8 vouchers, with the majority coming through the city. Only the county’s authority mentions the 2018 protections in information packets meant to help renters navigate the program. Neither packet says how to report income-based discrimination to the county. “If families with vouchers don’t know that they have protections, it is the responsibility of the housing authority to tell them,” said Philip Tegeler, executive director of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, a civil rights law and policy organization based in Washington, D.C. West Allis operates the only additional housing authority in Milwaukee County that distributes Section 8 vouchers. Its information packet notes protections against income-based discrimination, but it instructs renters to file complaints to a city agency rather than with the county. The city in 2022 received just three housing discrimination complaints — none of which prompted enforcement, its officials said. Milwaukee County Chief Corporation Counsel Margaret Daun told Wisconsin Watch her office questions whether the county has legal authority to enforce the ordinance. “Our office remains concerned that individual Section 8 discrimination enforcement actions rarely result in the immediate help that is needed by the person seeking housing,” she said in an email. Wisconsin Watch also found: “Some people are in situations where they’re like, ‘I don’t have time to file a complaint. I’m in this hamster wheel right now trying to find a place,’” said Kori Schneider Peragine, former senior administrator for the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council. Ebony Donald applied for a voucher after moving to Milwaukee from Danville, Illinois, in August 2022. She secured it within two months through the city’s lottery system. The 39-year-old attended an orientation where she received a briefing packet and a list of landlords known to accept vouchers.