Vouchers Welcome Here: Source of Income Antidiscrimination Laws in American Cities

Source of income (SOI) discrimination, or discrimination against voucher holders, poses a significant barrier to the Housing Choice Voucher Program’s policy goals, as it limits voucher holders’ ability to use their vouchers or move to opportunity neighborhoods. SOI antidiscrimination laws aim to deter this discrimination by making it illegal. While SOI protection laws have been an important initiative in the broader strategy to combat housing discrimination, further discussion is needed to explore why more cities have not adopted these laws and what factors might motivate them to do so. Using an ordered logit model within a discrete-time event history analysis framework, this study analyzes data built from five sources to explore SOI ordinance adoption in U.S. cities. The study finds that horizontal policy diffusion, vertical policy coercion, election-year dynamics, and local socioeconomic factors significantly influence SOI ordinance adoption and strength.